FYI
Article about a new more virulent strain of HIV which has surfaced.
FYI
Article about a new more virulent strain of HIV which has surfaced.
Not surprisingly, as the SARS-Cov-2 virus continues to infect and re-infect people around the world, it continues to mutate and evolve. The latest iteration of this virus, labeled Omicron, has become the dominant strain worldwide because of its significantly increased contagiousness but we are now seeing a new variant of this already troublesome version. There are actually 3 but one in particular is dominating.
Just to put things into perspective, in the 10 weeks since Omicron was first identified in South Africa, there have been more cases of Omicron (90 million worldwide) than in all the Covid cases of 2020, the first year of this pandemic. As another adjustment of perspective, although numbers are coming down in some places, the number of cases, hospitalization and deaths is as high, or is even higher than at the peak of this pandemic at any point in the last 2 years! We have adjusted our “shock and concern” threshold once again. “Oh well, what’s a few thousand new deaths a day. I’m done with this pandemic”. Well, the pandemic is nowhere near done with us.
The BA2 omicron subvariant is now taking hold and has become dominant in many countries like Denmark, India and the Philippines. It has been identified in many others like S. Africa, Norway and in the US as well. It is very early, but it appears to be even more infectious than Omicron but remains at the same lower level of disease generation. Hospitalization and death always follow by a few weeks so it is still early to have a good handle on this variant’s impact. Early studies on household contacts also show a greater degree of positivity, by about 1/3rd.
Although it is called a “subvariant” of Omicron, it really should have its own Greek letter designation. It has more mutations relative to the parent Omicron than the Alpha variant had compared with the original Wuhan strain.
Vaccination appears to still provide the same protection against BA2 as Omicron, which is less than against other versions, but still very good (more on the continued protection and importance of vaccination in another upcoming post).
Stay tuned for more info.
Stay safe and be well.
AC