{"id":4074,"date":"2022-04-04T13:05:34","date_gmt":"2022-04-04T13:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=4074"},"modified":"2022-04-04T13:05:34","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T13:05:34","slug":"this-new-covid-variant-is-the-most-unpredictable-one-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=4074","title":{"rendered":"This New COVID Variant Is the Most Unpredictable One Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Authors: David Axe<\/a> Published Apr. 03, 2022 10:47PM ET  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After spreading across Asia and Europe,<\/a> the BA.2 subvariant<\/a> of the novel coronavirus is now dominant in the United States, according to<\/a> the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right now, U.S. COVID cases are at a six-month low<\/a>. But what happens next in the U.S.<\/a> and nearby countries is hard to predict. Looking to Europe for hints isn\u2019t enormously helpful because, on that continent, BA.2 has behaved\u2026 unpredictably. Indeed, unpredictability might be exactly what Americans\u2014and everyone else\u2014should expect as the pandemic enters its 28th month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A patchwork of public health rules, varying vaccination rates, and differing amounts of natural immunity from past infections mean that no two countries are the same. But even those differences don\u2019t fully explain BA.2\u2019s uneven impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe bottom line is that it is not predictable what BA.2 will do,\u201d John Swartzberg, a professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at the University of California-Berkeley\u2019s School of Public Health, told The Daily Beast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid this confusion, at least one thing remains true, however. As volatile as BA.2 is when it comes to countries and populations, you can still protect yourself <\/em>by getting vaccinated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually, there\u2019s a pattern with new COVID lineages. An uptick in positive tests from clinics, hospitals, and wastewater samples correlates with a proportional increase in symptomatic infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when it comes to BA.2, \u201csomething different seems to be occurring,\u201d Peter Hotez, an expert in vaccine development at Baylor College, told The Daily Beast. \u201cBA.2 is going up everywhere in terms of percentage of virus isolated\u201d in tests, Hotez explained, \u201cyet this translates into many different scenarios in terms of rise in cases.\u201d\u201cI can’t say with any certainty that this can be chalked up to their vaccine policies or vaccine politics alone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BA.2 is a highly mutated cousin of the previously dominant BA.1 subvariant of Omicron, the latest major variant\u2014\u201clineage\u201d is the scientific term\u2013of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Changes to the spike protein, which helps the virus to grab onto and infect our cells, make BA.1 and BA.2 extremely transmissible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BA.1, which first appeared last fall and quickly drove record infections across much of the world, was the most contagious respiratory virus many virologists had ever seen\u2014until BA.2 showed up a few weeks after its older cousin. BA.2 could be as much as 80 percent more transmissible than BA.1, Swartzberg said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why BA.2 eventually has outcompeted BA.1 and become the dominant sublineage in a steadily growing number of countries. It happened first in China, which for more than two years managed to avoid major COVID outbreaks through a combination of travel restrictions, business closures, careful contact-tracing and strict quarantine rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BA.2 blew right through China\u2019s so-called \u201czero-COVID\u201d strategy, causing cases to spike in Hong Kong then neighboring Shenzen<\/a> then Shanghai. Authorities locked down each city in turn but still failed to stop the sublineage\u2019s march across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Europe was next. Health officials in the Americas watched nervously as BA.2 became dominant in one European country after another. After all, Europe tends to catch a particular coronavirus lineage or sublineage a month or six weeks before the U.S. and its neighbors do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But BA.2 hasn\u2019t sent clear signals. The first confusing datapoint actually wasn\u2019t in Europe\u2014it was in Africa. Weirdly, BA.2 was a virtual no-show in South Africa. That country logged a big surge in BA.1 cases in December, and then\u2026 nothing. A steady decline in cases even as BA.2 was ravaging other big, rich countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some European countries likewise have escaped significant harm from BA.2. Others are reeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United Kingdom<\/a> and France caught BA.1 big-time in December and January. Both countries reported record numbers of cases that, owing to the vaccines, fortunately didn\u2019t lead to record hospitalizations and deaths. Austria, by contrast, muddled through BA.1 before taking a huge <\/em>hit from BA.2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.K. reported<\/a> a weekly average of 183,000 new daily cases in early January. Three weeks later, France counted a staggering weekly average of 354,000 daily new cases. The U.K.\u2019s worst day for BA.1 deaths was Feb. 2, when authorities reported 535 COVID fatalities. On France\u2019s worst day of BA.1, Feb. 8, 691 people died of COVID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comparing the two countries is natural. Not only are they neighbors, they also have roughly the same number of people\u2013around 67 million. Both have managed to fully vaccinate around three-quarters of their populations. Both have wound down all major domestic COVID restrictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It makes sense that BA.2 would affect France and the U.K. similarly. And there, at least, the sublineage made some sense. The BA.2 wave that rolled across the U.K. and France starting in February has been relatively minor compared to the BA.1 wave\u2014in both countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

France\u2019s daily new BA.2 cases seem to be leveling off at a weekly average of 126,000 infections. The U.K.\u2019s weekly average of daily new cases peaked at 125,000 on March 21. Deaths tend to lag cases by a few weeks, so it\u2019s not clear how fatal BA.2 will be in either country, but so far the worst daily death toll is much lower than it was for BA.1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now consider Austria. With just 8.9 million people, it\u2019s smaller than the U.K. and France. But it\u2019s equally well-vaccinated\u2014and even came close to having a nationwide vaccine mandate before canceling the planned mandate back in early March, days before it was due to take effect. Austria, like most countries in Europe, has ended domestic restrictions on businesses and travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But unlike the U.K. and France, Austria caught BA.2 worsethan BA.1. Daily new case rates from BA.1 swelled to a weekly average of 34,000 and stayed there for a month and a half. Then BA.2 arrived in early March and, without much respite from BA.1, added another 10,000 daily new cases on top of the existing weekly average.\u201cI don\u2019t see a consistent thread between countries.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from a tiny dip in mid-March, the daily death rate has been going up and up on a weekly basis since January in Austria. BA.2 is claiming 40 lives a day, day after day on average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s difficult to determine which policies make the difference\u2014assuming differences in public health strategy matter at all against a virus as contagious as BA.2. Yes, Austria almost had a vaccine mandate, but it didn\u2019t actually take force. And it\u2019s very hard to say what the proposed mandate\u2019s impact was, or would have been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven if no additional people got vaccinated after a mandate was introduced, this doesn’t mean it didn\u2019t \u2018work,\u2019 as the purpose of the mandate may have been to simply ensure that the only people you encounter when out at a restaurant or concert are vaccinated,\u201d Maxwell Smith, a bioethicist at Western University in Ontario, told The Daily Beast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn that case, the vaccination mandate \u2018working\u2019 would mean reducing levels of transmission of the virus in the settings to which it applied,\u201d Smith added. \u201cOr, in the case of preserving critical infrastructure, it would mean something like fewer cases of severe illness or hospitalizations among those to whom the mandate applied.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are lots of ways Austria\u2019s vaccine mandate might have improved outcomes for millions of Austrians at risk of catching COVID. But that didn\u2019t stop Austria as a whole from suffering worse from BA.2 than other nearby countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are many factors that may have led to the case numbers we’re seeing both in Austria and its neighboring countries, so I can\u2019t say with any certainty that this can be chalked up to their vaccine policies or vaccine politics alone,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experts are at a loss to explain what other factors might be at work. If nearby countries have vaccinated roughly the same percentage of their populations and have also reopened their borders, businesses and schools\u2014thus allowing for a certain level of natural immunity from past infection\u2014then they should be equally prepared for a new viral lineage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly, they\u2019re not. \u201cI don\u2019t see a consistent thread between countries,\u201d Swartzberg said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are serious implications for the rest of the world as it braces for BA.2. Even strong vaccine uptake and lingering natural immunity might not spare you a big bump in infections. By the same token, BA.2 might just bypass a country for reasons no one fully understands, like it did with South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the experiences of whole countries aren\u2019t the experiences of individuals. Yes, BA.2 might have unpredictable effects on populations. But the science is clear on how people can reduce their personal risk. Favor well-ventilated indoor spaces. Wear an N95 mask when local case rates are high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most importantly, get vaccinated and boosted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authors: David Axe Published Apr. 03, 2022 10:47PM ET  After spreading across Asia and Europe, the BA.2 subvariant of the novel coronavirus is now dominant in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[708,725,727,375,607,612],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ba-2-covid","category-booster-shot","category-breakthrough-infections","category-news-of-the-day","category-vaccine-news","category-variants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}