Onearound the world, the latest sub-variant of Omicron, BA.5, is rapidly becoming the dominant strain of SARS-CoV-2. It just took the top spot in the US: As of the last week of June, BA.5 has taken more than a half of all new COVID-19 cases, according to new estimates from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This number is up 10 percentage points from the previous week.
For a number of reasons – including the lack of protection and mutation functions in the virus – BA.5 can currently be difficult to control.
The Power of BA.5 (and its siblings BA.4, which accounts for about 16% of new cases in the United States, has a mutated protein mutation similar to BA.5, but does not appear to spread rapidly) which is the infectivity and re-infection of most people. This highly contagious strain is able to evade human built-up immunity, whether due to vaccination or previous infection. Like Nature According to reports, laboratory studies show that even people who have so-called “hybrid immunity” from vaccination and have been infected with the Omicron BA.1 strain are less able to prevent reinfection from strain BA.4 or BA.5. Experts believe this is largely due to changes in the virus’s mutant proteins. Current COVID-19 vaccines and vaccines target the original virus strain and not any variant, so vaccination does not provide as much protection as it once did against infection. infection. (Fortunately, Vaccines still offer broad protection against the worst outcomes of the disease.)
Since BA.4 and BA.5 were taken over, “we have seen a number of reinfection cases,” said Dr. Wesley Long, an experimental pathologist at Houston Methodist Hospital, told CNN“And I’ve seen some reinfection with people with the BA.2 variant in the last few months.”
Combines the virus’s greater transmissibility and higher immunity to avoidance with fewer nationwide protection missions, and a high risk of infection. The conditions are also ripe for new variants to emerge, as the risk of mutation increases as the virus spreads more. Above all, recent research (still not peer-reviewed) shows that people who have been reinfected with COVID-19 have a higher risk of hospitalization and death than those who are newly infected once. They are also more likely to develop new and long-term health problems, including lung and heart problems, fatigue, digestive and kidney disorders, diabetes, and neurological problems.
Vaccine manufacturers are trying to keep up with this virus. On June 30, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) speak new enhanced photos for fall must target BA.4 and BA.5. But while the companies are developing new vaccines to specifically tackle Omicron, it’s not yet clear how effective they will be in dealing with the more recent sub-variants, or, if the virus continues. As it continues to evolve so rapidly, anything developed today will be obsolete by the time it becomes available.
News hope is from what Experts so far, variant BA.5 do not cause a more severe form of infection (although scientists are still gathering more data on this), reported symptoms have not changed much, and rates of death and hospitalization are lower in the US than in winter Omicron waves. (This is subject to change, however, as hospitalizations appear to have increased slightly recently, According to CDC.)
In the meantime, experts introduce that people over the age of 50 should not delay taking their boosters, as the risk of infection right now is very high.
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