MOSCOW, August 23. /TASS/. The BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus' Omicron strain account for 95.62 percent of COVID-19 cases confirmed in Russia in the past two weeks, Russia's sanitary watchdog said on Tuesday.

"In the past two weeks, the BA.4/BA.5 Omicron subvariants accounted for 95.62 percent of all sequences, the BA.2 subvariant accounted for 4.13 percent. Other non-dominant subvariants accounted for 0.25 percent of cases," it said.

As of August 22, Russia's national database of SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences VGARus had 152,720 SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences obtained as a result of whole-genome and fragment sequencing.

As many as 243,173 coronavirus cases were confirmed in Russia during the 33rd week on the year. The incidence rate was 165.7 cases per 100,000 people, or by 38.4 percent up on the previous week. The incidence higher than Russia's average was registered in 23 Russian regions.