Discovery of new Omicron subvariant reported in Russia

New Omicron variant XBB.1.5, dubbed Kraken, has been discovered in Russia for the first time, the press service of the Russia’s Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) told reporters on Thursday.

"The first case of infection <...> with the XBB.1.5 (Kraken) Omicron subvariant was recorded in the Penza region during the monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing data uploaded daily to the national VGARus database," the report said.

According to the sanitary watchdog, there are many Omicron subvariants in Russia now, however, the BA.5 variant dominates.The Delta strain prevailed in the second half of 2021 and was registered in some separate cases last fall, other strains were not recorded in recent months.

"Rospotrebnadzor labs and other departments continue permanent monitoring of COVID-19 variants circulating in the Russian Federation and a number of neighboring countries with uploading of genomic data to the national database VGARus, where 226,000 genome sequences are already stored. At present, more than 150 organizations that carry out sequencing of coronavirus genomes have been connected to the system", Rospotrebnadzor said.