CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky says Omicron subvariant BA.2 accounts for 72 p.c of COVID-19 circumstances within the US.
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COVID-19 case numbers have remained secure within the US, even because the extremely contagious BA.2 subvariant has unfold to grow to be the dominant type of the virus.
Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky stated the brand new subvariant now accounts for round 72% of circumstances nationally, although figures present it has not pushed a brand new surge prefer it has in European international locations.
“Trying throughout the nation, we see that 95% of counties are reporting low COVID-19 neighborhood ranges, which signify over 97% of the US inhabitants,” Walensky stated at a White Home press briefing Tuesday.
Whereas international locations like France, the UK and the Netherlands have seen spikes, day by day case counts within the US are the bottom they’ve been since final summer season, in line with figures from Johns Hopkins College. In New York, case numbers have been comparatively secure since February when the primary Omicron wave ended.
Hospitalizations and deaths additionally aren’t trending considerably upward, partially as a result of so many Individuals got here down with Omicron in December 2021 and January 2022.
“The unfold of Omicron within the winter made a protecting issue towards the severity of BA.2 variant,” Martine Hackett, the director of the Public Well being Program at Hofstra College, advised The Put up Wednesday. “The vast majority of Individuals are vaccinated, and contracting and recovering from Omicron gave many individuals the equal of a ‘booster shot’ of antibodies,” she stated.
However consultants cautioned that the secure COVID-19 monitoring could also be deceptive, as extra individuals flip to at-home checks.
“The extra frequent testing — residence checks — usually are not reported when it comes to the statistics, so it’s potential we're having a rise within the variety of optimistic COVID circumstances,” Hackett stated. “We don’t have the identical manner of measuring it as we did a 12 months in the past.”
Others careworn that the standard of COVID-19 knowledge differs from nation to nation.
“It’s very deceptive to take a look at illness knowledge nation to nation as a result of the way in which we collect knowledge may be very completely different,” Dr. Anthony Santella, an infectious illness professor on the College of New Haven, advised The Put up, partially as a result of the US has “just about deserted most of our mitigation measures.”
“Folks aren’t reporting circumstances and there’s much less authorities intervention. The extra you search for one thing the extra you’re going to seek out it,” he added.
Santella stated that finally, it is perhaps too quickly to inform what impact BA.2 may have.
“The virus continues to be spreading locally,” Santella stated. “We’re going to proceed to have new variants, that’s what these items do.”
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