This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
Russia has recorded its first official case of the so-called Kraken subvariant of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, the Rospotrebnadzor state monitoring agency reporting on January 12. The highly contagious subvariant was reported in the Penza region. Kraken, which the World Health Organization on January 4 proclaimed the most transmissible known COVID-19 variant, was first detected in the United States in October. It has since been detected in several European countries.
