The point is that the updates are not incremental. The weekly OTAs each time contain the full ROM, even if changes relative to the previous one are minor or non-existing.
The idea behind the a/b partitioning scheme is to keep the previous version of the system intact for backup, while flashing a completely new version of the OS to the respective other slot with every update. This is to make sure one of the slots always contains a working OS, even in case of a bad flash or faulty download.