Photo/Illutration Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike attends a meeting of the metropolitan government's COVID-19 monitoring panel on Feb. 25. (Provided by the metropolitan government)

Tokyo confirmed 30 cases of infections with the BA.2 Omicron subvariant by the end of January, the metropolitan government said on Feb. 25.

The subvariant is known abroad as “stealth Omicron” because it is difficult to tell apart from other variants.

Although the number of new COVID-19 cases, along with how many patients have been hospitalized with the disease, have both stopped rising in the capital, experts voiced concerns for the highly transmissible subvariant, calling for a need to monitor the spread of BA.2.

The metropolitan government confirmed one case of BA.2 in December and 29 cases in January through genome sequencing, according to data presented at a meeting of its COVID-19 monitoring panel on Feb. 25.

Of these, 25 patients were deemed to have contracted the subvariant through community transmission since they have not recently traveled abroad. The number of BA.2 cases could rise further as more samples taken from COVID-19 patients get analyzed.

Apart from the genome sequencing, PCR tests conducted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health detected five suspected cases of the subvariant between Feb. 8 and 21.

Tokyo reported 11,125 new COVID-19 cases on Feb. 25, down 5,004 from a week ago, and 23 deaths among patients in their 50s or older.

The seven-day average of new cases over the week through Feb. 25 was 11,794.3, or 80.9 percent of the figure for the preceding week.

The same day, Osaka Prefecture confirmed 8,534 new COVID-19 cases and 47 new deaths.

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