Here's the latest variant picture for New Zealand.
The lineage (BA.1) Omicron is dominant globally, also recently in NZ samples. The BA.2 sibling lineage is also present at significant frequencies.
๐งต
An Omicron community outbreak was just reported, but those samples will not be sequenced for a few more days yet.
Hopefully this analysis provides some guidance on the likely composition of that outbreak.
TL/DR; it depends.
BA.1 with the Spike R346K mutation was classified quite recently as BA.1.1. That mutation is understood to give increased immunity escape.
That lineage change has not yet flowed out to databases and websites.
Here's an analysis of cases and deaths, for Australia, then state-by-state.
I couldn't bear to post this last week as the case rate was one of the worst in the world (with WA at near-zero). That seems to have been the peak.
The death rate continues to increase.
New South Wales is the worst affected state, where the case rate rose to just under 4,000 per 100K population. If NSW was a country, that would've been the highest rate globally for any comparable country.
Victoria rose to a similar level, just slightly lower on this "per population" basis.
The rise in cases was even steeper than in NSW, so the impact of that on deaths is likely yet to come.
The Australian states each have fairly discrete outbreaks with quite different profiles.
Here's New South Wales, where NPIs were first dropped as BA.1 arrived, and multiple super-spreader events in mid-December. Together that paved the way for the total dominance at ~95%.
Here's the latest variant picture for BA.1 (Omicron) with the Spike R346K mutation. That mutation helps with immunity escape.
This combination was recently identified as a new sub-lineage BA.1.1, but that will take some time to filter through to databases and websites.
๐งต
The global analysis (above) of BA.1 with the Spike R346K mutation shows it's frequency was low, but has been steadily increasing (as a proportion of all BA.1 samples).
In the United Kingdom, the frequency of BA.1 with the Spike R346K mutation has been steadily growing, recently at ~25% (of all BA.1 samples).