Hong Kong uncovers new Covid strain in local sewage waters, but officials say it’s unlikely to cause severe illness
- Centre for Health Protection detects KP.2 strain as part of sewage surveillance work, but says JN.1 remains most prevalent variant
- KP.2 is offshoot of Omicron variant and was first detected in India in early January, before spreading around world and becoming dominant strain in US
The Centre for Health Protection said the KP.2 strain was discovered as part of sewage surveillance work, but added that JN.1 remained the most prevalent variant in the city as of Tuesday.
“But the current information does not suggest JN.1 or KP.2 will cause a more severe disease than the previously prevalent XBB and its descendant lineages,” the centre said in its weekly Covid and flu report published on Thursday.
Health authorities also said the latest sewage surveillance data as of Tuesday showed JN.1 and its descendant lineages accounted for 98.8 per cent of all detected specimens in Hong Kong.
KP.2, a strain deriving from JN.1, accounted for about 15 per cent of the Covid-19 specimens tested, it added.
The World Health Organization has listed KP.2 as a variant under observation.
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KP.2 is an offshoot of the Omicron variant and was first detected in India in early January, before spreading around the world and becoming the dominant strain in the United States.
Mainland China detected a local KP.2 case in Guangdong province in March, while there have been 25 reported infections across the country as of May 12.
“The proportion of KP.2 cases in local weekly reports ranges from 0.05 per cent to 0.3 per cent, which is a very low level,” the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday.
The centre said the chances of KP.2 replacing JN.1 as the country’s dominant Covid-19 strain or triggering a new wave of infections were low.
