Situation Report of MPOX in Global and ASEAN Region - 06 January 2023

Worldwide, there have been over 655 million cases and over 6 million deaths attributed to COVID-19.

The World Health Organization said that the XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant that’s currently dominating the U.S. is the most contagious version of COVID-19. According to the WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, the global health officials are worried about how quickly the subvariant is spreading in the ortheastern U.S. The number of people infected with XBB.1.5 has been doubling in the U.S. about every two weeks, making it the most common variant circulating in the country. The WHO doesn’t have any data yet on the severity of XBB.1.5, but there’s no indication at the moment that it makes people sicker than previous versions of omicron. During the Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution (TAG-VE), Beijing’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention shared data Tuesday with the WHO indicating BA.5 sublineages, BA.5.2 and BF.7, account for about 98% of all infections in the country based on more than 2000 genomes collected and sequenced from 1 December 2022.