As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations begin to increase again in the U.S., public health officials are monitoring several new Omicron subvariants that are contributing to the case numbers.
Cases are increasing in all but four states and have increased by more than 50%, compared with the previous week, in Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, South Dakota, and Washington, CNN reported. In New York, more than a quarter of the state’s population is in a county with a “high” community level.from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Hospitalizations have increased about 18% in the past 2 weeks.BA.2.12.
By comparison, the World Health Organization uses an 8-fold drop in neutralization as the starting point for requiring an update to seasonal, CNN reported. The researchers concluded that BA.4 and BA.5 have the “potential to result in a new infection wave.” The research lab was the same one that characterized the first Omicron variant.
“Just because you were infected does not mean you have a lot of protection from what’s coming next,” Alex Sigal, PhD, the senior study author and a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute, told CNN.