Covid-19: Omicron subvariants driving China's latest outbreak, says WHO

China's recent Covid-19 outbreak is predominantly led by the Omicron subvariants BA.5.2 and BF.7, which together account for 97.5% of all local infections, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

The data was based on an analysis of more than 2,000 genomes by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the WHO said.

The agency also said the data was in line with genomes from travellers from China submitted to the global database by other countries and no new variant or mutation of known significance was noted in the publicly available sequence data.

The data comes from a briefing by China's top scientists to the UN agency's technical advisory group on Tuesday as concerns grow about the rapid spread of the virus in the world's No. 2 economy.

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