South Africa is seeing more cases of the BA.2 sub-variant of the Omicron coronavirus variant and is monitoring it, but there is no clear sign that BA.2 is substantially different from the original Omicron strain, a senior scientist said.

Michelle Groome, from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, showed in a presentation that BA.2 accounted for 23 per cent of the 450 samples from January sequenced by South Africa's genomic surveillance network and the original strain 75pc.

Of the 2,243 samples from December that were sequenced, BA.2 accounted for four per cent and the original strain 94pc.

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