Prince William and Kate release photo of daughter Charlotte to mark ninth birthday
Prince William and his wife Kate released a picture of their daughter Charlotte to mark the princess's ninth birthday on Thursday.
The U.K. Health Security Agency on Friday designated a sub-lineage of the dominant and highly transmissible Omicron coronavirus variant as a variant under investigation, saying it could have a growth advantage.
BA.2, which does not have the specific mutation seen with Omicron that can help to easily distinguish it from Delta, is being investigated but has not been designated a variant of concern.
"It is the nature of viruses to evolve and mutate, so it's to be expected that we will continue to see new variants emerge," Dr Meera Chand, incident director at the UKHSA, said.
"Our continued genomic surveillance allows us to detect them and assess whether they are significant."
Britain has sequenced 426 cases of the BA.2 sub-lineage, and the UKHSA said that while there was uncertainty around the significance of the changes to the viral genome, early analysis suggested an increased growth rate compared to the original Omicron lineage, BA.1.
UKHSA said that 40 countries had reported BA.2 sequences, with the most samples reported in Denmark, followed by India, Britain, Sweden and Singapore.
In Denmark, BA.2 has grown rapidly. It accounted for 20% of all COVID cases in the last week of 2021, rising to 45% in the second week of 2022.
Anders Fomsgaard, researcher at Statens Serum Institut (SSI), said he did not yet have a good explanation for the rapid growth of the sub-lineage, adding he was puzzled, but not worried.
"It may be that it is more resistant to the immunity in the population, which allows it to infect more. We do not know yet," he told broadcaster TV 2, adding that there was a possibility that people infected with BA.1 might not be immune from then catching BA.2 soon after.
"It is a possibility," he said. "In that case, we must be prepared for it. And then, in fact, we might see two peaks of this epidemic."
Initial analysis made by Denmark's SSI showed no difference in hospitalisations for BA.2 compared to BA.1.
Reporting by Alistair Smout in London and Nikolaj Skydsgaard in Copenhagen; Editing by Andrew MacAskill, Kate Holton and Andy Bruce
Prince William and his wife Kate released a picture of their daughter Charlotte to mark the princess's ninth birthday on Thursday.
H5N1 or avian flu has been detected at dozens of US dairy farms and Canadian experts are urging surveillance on our side of the border too.
A Canadian restaurant lowered its prices this week, and though news of price tags dropping rather than climbing sounds unusual, the business strategy in this case is not, according to experts in the field.
A 49-year-old man has been charged in connection with an alleged assault that happened earlier this week in Dartmouth, N.S.
Inspections are underway at more than one Loblaws location in Ottawa after complaints were filed about tall Plexiglas barriers.
Archeologists have unearthed the skeletons of five people, missing their hands and feet, at a former Nazi military base in Poland.
Nathaly Paola Castro Torres has a rare disorder called Laron syndrome that is caused by a genetic mutation. It stunts her growth but also provides a hidden silver lining: Her body is protected from chronic diseases such as cancer that often take life away long before old age.
Canadian baseball player Tyler Black made a major splash in his first-ever big league game for the Milwaukee Brewers on Tuesday night.
Guitarist Duane Eddy, best known for twangy riffs on hits such as 'Rebel Rouser' and 'Cannonball,' has died at the age of 86.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.