What to Know About the Highly-Contagious COVID Variant, BA.5
Geovien So/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty COVID-19 testing
More than two years since the global pandemic began, another COVID-19 variant has quickly spread across the country.
The BA.5 omicron subvariant now accounts for 64% of cases in the U.S. and has resulted in a nationwide increase in reinfections and hospitalizations, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
BA.5 was first identified in South Africa in January and the World Health Organization began tracking its global spread in April. The subvariant has sparked concern among health officials due to its enhanced transmissibility beyond other omicron variants.
During a White House briefing Tuesday, Fauci said that BA.5 "substantially evades neutralizing antibodies" in people who have been vaccinated or previously infected. He explained that this means anyone who was infected with COVID during the first omicron wave won't have much protection against the latest subvariant, even a short time after.
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Eric Topol, a cardiologist and professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, called BA.5 "the worst version of the virus we've seen" in a recent newsletter because of its increased contagiousness. However, Fauci said that though hospitalizations have increased, the subvariant doesn't appear to be more severe than past COVID variants. Symptoms for BA.5 are also similar to those of previous strains.
"Each successive variant has a bit of a transmission advantage over the prior one," Fauci explained. "It's something that, A, we don't panic on, B, we don't let it disrupt our lives, but we take it seriously enough and utilize the tools that we have to mitigate."
Health experts maintain that the best way to stay protected from COVID and its variants is by getting the vaccine and booster shots.
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Last month, Pfizer announced that its tweaked COVID-19 shots to target the omicron variant have demonstrated substantially higher protection against the coronavirus. The results from the studies suggest the vaccines are adequate for the omicron BA.4 and BA.5.
"As we've said since the early days of the pandemic, we will follow the science and adapt our own approaches as needed to help address COVID-19 as the virus evolves," Albert Bourla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pfizer said in a statement. "Based on these data, we believe we have two very strong omicron-adapted candidates that elicit a substantially higher immune response against omicron than we've seen to date."
Moderna also released preliminary data stating its new "bivalent" booster shot caused an eightfold increase in neutralizing antibody levels while still being effective against other variants of concern.
"We're pretty confident this vaccine is going to provide a benefit even against the family of omicron subvariants," Moderna President Stephen Hoge told reporters, per The Washington Post.
"We will not prevent all transmission — that is not the goal — but we have to reduce the spread," Maria Van Kerkhove, infectious-disease epidemiologist at the World Health Organization, told The Atlantic. "It's not over, and we are playing with fire by letting this virus circulate at such intense levels."
