While the share in calendar week 20 was still around three percent, in week 21 it was already eight percent. However, there is currently no increase in the total number of cases, as the Ministry of Health said on Tuesday.
The new variant is currently causing a sharp increase in new infections, especially in Portugal. However, this could also be due to the fact that the country was only briefly affected by the omicron wave – and the population is more vulnerable to the omicron variant BA.4/BA.5. Austria, on the other hand, recorded a very long wave, which means that the overall immunization could be higher. This could then mean that, despite the new variant, the number of cases will not increase to the same extent as in Portugal.
According to the Ministry of Health, a precise overview of the virus variants currently circulating is of particular importance in the fight against the corona pandemic. “Because the method previously used in PCR tests can only imprecisely differentiate between the omicron subvariants, the Ministry of Health will in future increasingly rely on the most complex and precise method, the so-called sentinel variant surveillance system,” it said in a press release.
In the so-called sentinel analysis, representative positive samples are analyzed by means of sequencing in all federal states. In this way, they can be assigned exactly to a virus variant. The analyzes can then provide a representative overview of what is happening with variants throughout the country. “Furthermore, the sentinel analysis offers the advantage that possible newly occurring virus variants can be recognized immediately and their occurrence can be reported to the international authorities,” says the ministry.
Wastewater monitoring remains unchanged. The wastewater from central sewage treatment plant locations throughout Austria is continuously examined for traces of the corona virus and the variant events are analyzed by sequencing. This monitoring provides a broad overview of the case history and the variant situation in Austria, “and is continued by the Ministry of Health as an important pillar of variant monitoring,” as it said.
The program includes the 24 largest sewage treatment plants in Austria. This achieves population coverage of around 52 percent. “The scope of the monitoring is sufficient to meet the EU requirements and thus to create a situation picture that is representative for Austria,” says the Ministry of Health.
Source: Nachrichten
