Russia Detects 1st Omicron's XBB Subvariant Infection

Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) announced detecting the first infection with the new Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5., Russia Today reported on Thursday.

The official institution asserted the presence of the first infection of the new Omicron subvariant in Penza.

The statement highlighted: "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."

Authorities pointed out that Russia detected a number of Omicron subvariants, however, Delta remains the most dominant variant in the country.

The statement said: "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.

The latest mutation of Omicron is currently the most dominant subvariant of the strain.