An infectious disease expert on Monday downplayed the recent detection of the Omicron subvariant BQ.1, noting that the increase in Covid-19 infections in the country may only be less than 5,000 per day.
"I think that if BQ.1 will cause a spike in the number of cases, it will not be high. Perhaps it won't exceed 5,000 cases," Dr. Edsel Salvana said in the Laging Handa public briefing.
Salvana said most of the cases from the BQ.1 — a "highly-transmissible" sublineage of Omicron BA.5 subvariant — will be mild and won't need to be hospitalized.
Last week, the Department of Health announced the detection of the first cases of the "highly-immune evasive" Omicron subvariant BQ.1 in the country.
Health Officer-in-Charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said a total of 14 cases of Omicron subvariant BQ.1 were detected in the latest whole genomic sequencing by the University of the Philippines — Philippine Genome Center and the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine.
The BQ.1 subvariant is a sublineage of the Omicron variant and is considered as a variant of interest by the World Health Organization.
Vergeire described the subvariant as "more transmissible" and " highly immune evasive" compared to other Omicron subvariants.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has previously announced that the Omicron subvariants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 are now the most dominant Covid-19 variants in the country — accounting for nearly half of the cases in the country in the last two weeks.
