The World Health Organisation says it is tracking a few dozen cases of two new subvariants of the highly transmissible Omicron strain of the coronavirus to assess whether they are more infectious or dangerous, reports Reuters.

It has added BA.4 and BA.5, sister variants of the original BA.1 Omicron variant, to its list for monitoring. It is already tracking BA.1 and BA.2 — now globally dominant — as well as BA.1.1 and BA.3.

The WHO said it had begun tracking them because of their “additional mutations that need to be further studied to understand their impact on immune escape potential”.