In a month of Covid checks on direct flights from China to Malpensa, the variants of Sars-CoV-2 that most often landed with passengers arriving from the Asian giant are two in particular: BA.5.2 and BF.7. It is the ‘map’ of mutants that emerged from the sequencing performed in Lombardy. What is confirmed is that the viruses detected in travelers from China are old acquaintances of the Omicron family. And the variant that was most feared at the beginning of 2023, that is XBB.1.5, christened Kraken on social media and monitored by centers for disease control around the world for its immunoevasive potential, continues to be missing.
The picture traced by the samples of the sequenced travellers, according to the summary seen by Adnkronos Salute, seems to be the mirror of the Chinese situation, as proposed in recent days by the World Health Organization on the basis of data from the national authorities. Indeed, according to this analysis, the Covid epidemic in China was mainly driven by BA.5.2 and BF.7. And in fact, the most numerous sequences collected by the experts who analyzed the Malpensa swabs are precisely of these two subvariants. About twenty (out of 39) are the sequences of BA.5.2 (and descendants), while about ten are those of BF.7. Also in the list is a sequence of Omicron 5 (BA.5), 4 of BE.1.1.1, one of BQ.1.1, known as Cerberus, and 3 are classified as undetermined.
