There are now five confirmed infections in Thailand of the antibody-resistant sub-variant of Covid-19, BA.2.75, and health authorities are closely watching its development.
Dr Supakit Sirilak, director-general of the Department of Medical Sciences, said on Monday that the first BA.2.75 case was a 53-year-old Thai man in Trang. He attended a meeting in Phuket on June 23 and 24.
The second confirmed case was a Thai man, 62, of Phrae province, who developed a cough and had excessive phlegm and was suspected to have caught the sub-variant from his daughter, who lives in Bangkok.
The third case was a high school student, 18, who was part of a Covid-19 cluster at his school. He is a native of Nan.
The fourth case was a man, 62, in Songkhla province. He had earlier declined vaccination because he mistakenly feared the vaccine would react badly with his allergy problem, Dr Supakit said.
The man was severely ill, dependent on a ventilator and in intensive care, he said.
"Allergy is not a reason for exception from Covid-19 vaccination. Without inoculation, infected people will suffer severe symptoms," he said.
The fifth case was an elderly, bed-ridden woman in Bangkok.
"Officials are monitoring the development of the sub-variant. If the strain is highly transmissible, its infection percentage will gradually rise. Otherwise, cases will go up only for a certain period," Dr Supakit said.
Dr Supakit said previously that the BA.2.75 strain could avoid antibodies because it had about 90 mutations that differed it from the original Wuhan strain.
He said over the past week, samples from 382 Covid-19 cases were examined and most of them, 322, were the BA.4/BA.5 sub-variants of the Omicron variant. There was one BA.1 case, 58 BA.2 cases and one BA.2.75 case.
BA.4/BA.5 was found in 91.5% of the examined cases in Bangkok and 80% in other provinces.
