Teks: Nancy Rumagit
Foto: Dimas Ardian/Bloomberg

“Subvarian BA.2 ini sudah ada di Indonesia. Hasil genome sequencing kita terakhir dalam dua bulan melihat sudah melakukan 8.032, di akhir-akhir proporsi BA.2 ini sudah dominan di Indonesia,” ujar Menteri Kesehatan dalam konferensi pers virtual terkait hasil Ratas Evaluasi PPKM pada hari Senin kemarin. (Detik Health)

Menurut The New York Times, subvarian BA.2 pertama ditemukan pada bulan November tahun lalu, bersamaan dengan 2 subvarian Omicron lainnya. Hanya saja, pada saat itu, subvarian BA.1 seribu kali lebih sering ditemukan dibandingkan subvarian BA.2. Hal ini mulai berubah pada awal tahun 2022. Menurut mereka pun, subvarian ini tidak akan menyebabkan kenaikan kasus, sebab:

– Existing vaccines work against the BA.2 variant.
– The BA.2 variant is vulnerable to antibodies made by the immune system after an earlier Omicron infection. 
– BA.2 does not appear to be more severe than the previous version of Omicron.
– Some authorized medications work against BA.2. Others don’t.

Artikel tersebut pun menambahkan bahwa julukan ‘stealth variant’ untuk subvarian ini karena tidak muncul di tes PCR seperti subvarian BA.1 sudah outdated. “Now that a vast majority of positive tests involve Omicron, the missing mutation doesn’t matter: Nearly all viruses picked up by PCR are BA.1, and those that are not are BA.2.”

Sydney Morning Herald pun mengatakan bahwa ‘the jury is still out’, atau keputusan belum dibuat secara bulat, mengenai kemampuan menular subvarian ini. “An early Japanese study estimated it was 4.2 times as infectious as Delta, while French research suggested it was closer to double.”

Director US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mengatakan kepada CNN Health, “There is no evidence that the BA.2 lineage is more severe than the BA.1 lineage. CDC continues to monitor variants that are circulating both domestically and internationally. We will continue to monitor emerging data on disease severity in humans and findings from papers like this conducted in laboratory settings.”