On Friday, Victoria’s Health Minister Martin Foley said the state had “seen a steady increase in the BA.2 sub-variant.” However, the Department of Health was unable to provide up to date figures on how many BA.2 cases were now circulating in the community.Mr Foley said “there is expectation that [the sub-variant] is in fact more infectious,” adding the best means of protection against BA.2 was the COVID-19 vaccine.Experts say while the BA.2 variant is 30-40 per cent more infectious than the original omicron strain, Victoria is in a good position to deal with an increased number of coronavirus cases due to strong vaccination rates and a large number of prior infections in the community.“It could lead to an acceleration of new cases, but we now have layers of protection against severe disease,” Melbourne University’s Head of Population and Global Health Nancy Baxter said.However, Professor Baxter warned the jury is still out on whether the sub-variant is more deadly than the original omicron strain.“We don’t know for sure if it is more serious, there is some data to indicate it could be,” Ms Baxter said.“There are still a lot of unknowns.”Deakin University’s Chair in Epidemiology Professor Catherine Bennett said Victorians should expect to see higher COVID-19 case numbers due to the sub-variant. “Before you might have had a bit of time that you were not exposed to the virus… now you might bump into the virus a little more regularly,” she said.“This sub variant shouldn’t change things, the [vaccine] booster numbers are getting up there which will help us.Professor Bennett said she did not expect hospitalisation numbers to rise despite the surge in new infections.“Hospitalisations will probably start to level out, we will see a consistent but hopefully lower number of people in our hospitals.”But the leading epidemiologist advised people to continue wearing masks in high risk settings – including shopping centres – especially in areas where there is a large number of local coronavirus cases.
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