The DOH announcement comes a day after Vergeire said in a television interview on Monday, January 24, that the Philippines had not detected any case of the stealth Omicron, as she gave assurances that PGC has the capability to detect “all possible lineages that are present in every sample” through genome sequencing.
The Philippines now has 535 cases of Omicron. The DOH has yet to give specific details how many of these are from the BA.1 or BA.2 sublineages. Philippine health officials have stressed that stealth Omicron is no different from the original Omicron variant . “Walang nakitang significant difference sa clinical presentation ang BA.1 at BA.2 at kinakailangan pa rin ng masusing pag-aaral, dahil limitado pa rin naman ang mga obserbasyon na nakukuha dito,”The UK Health Security Agency has classified the Omircon subvariant as “variant of investigation” after preliminary studies showed that it might be both more transmissible and could evade vaccines better than other variants of the novel coronavirus.