Health Minister Dr Ifereimi Waqainabete says vaccinated individuals are less likely to spread BA.2 – a sub-variant of the Omicron.

However, he said the other variants like Delta and Omicron taught us that vaccination prevents individuals from getting severe infections and death.

“That’s why it is important to understand that we can’t have this discussion about oh there’s this new variant-when you are not vaccinated. We must have the vaccination because vaccination will help you as an individual and to break the chain of community transmission.”

The ministry had detected one BA.2 border case but it was contained.

Meanwhile, World Health Organisation COVID incident manager Dr Abdi Mahamud, in a recent interview said the BA.2 variant was more transmissible.

He also said individuals could get re-infected with the BA.2 variant because of the immune durability.

“The B cells produce immunoglobulin you maintain those immunoglobulins for certain times and they go down after three to six months depending this is just an average and is the trouble the flows of the average so please take what’s true for the average it’s not may not be true for that individual.”

Mahamud says when a person is re-infected, they may experience a mild infection but COVID-19 vaccines is effective against severe disease and hospitalisation.