Situation Report of MPOX in Global and ASEAN Region - 13 January 2023

 The World Health Organization (WHO) advisory group on virus evolution said the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant is poised to drive an increase in COVID-19 cases, but it cautioned that confidence in its assessment is low, because most of the information is based on data from just one country—the United States. The WHO said 5,288 XBB.1.5 sequences have been reported between October 22, 2022 and January 11, 2023 from 38 countries with over 82% from the United States, 8.1% from the United Kingdom and 2.2% from Denmark among other countries reporting the most sequences. Meanwhile, the WHO reported moderate confidence assessment stating that the XBB variants are the most antibody-resistant variants to date. XBB.1.5 is shown to be equally immune evasive as XBB.1, the Omicron subvariant with the highest immune escape using pseudotyped virus neutralization assays. Furthermore, WHO also stated that there is currently no data on real world vaccine effectiveness against severe disease or death.