As Australia and several other countries around the world begin to ease Covid restrictions, new-subvariants are beginning to emerge in Europe, Asia and the US.
These new variants have been nicknamed the ‘Scrabble Variants’ because they use high value boardgame letters such as B, Q, X and Z.
The new sub-variants are descendants of the BA4 and BA5 strains which have been in circulation for a majority of 2022.
According to Cosmos journalist Matthew Agius, only two weeks ago the BA5 variant accounted for more than 70 percent of cases worldwide, compared to 50 percent only two weeks later.
The US Centres for Disease Control revealed that the BQ variants have increased from occupying 9.4 percent of cases to 27 percent of cases within a two week period while BF and BQ account for more than one fifth of cases in Australia.
Cosmos journalist Matthew Agius joins Dr Sophie Calabretto on this week’s episode of The Science Briefing to discuss the impact of the latest variants and whether current vaccinations can protect us from ever-changing sub-variants.
Tune into the full episode of The Science Briefing below…