{"id":5069,"date":"2022-07-10T19:38:09","date_gmt":"2022-07-10T19:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=5069"},"modified":"2022-07-10T19:38:09","modified_gmt":"2022-07-10T19:38:09","slug":"the-summer-of-subvariants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=5069","title":{"rendered":"The summer of subvariants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/authors\/treed\"><\/a>Authors:  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/authors\/treed\">Tina Reed<\/a>, July 9, 2022&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/newsletters\/axios-vitals\">Axios Vitals<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As this summer heats up, so has the spread of the hot new version of COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Why it matters:&nbsp;<\/strong>This subvariant of Omicron called BA.5 \u2014&nbsp;the most transmissible subvariant yet \u2014&nbsp;quickly overtook previous strains to become the dominant version circulating the U.S. and much of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>BA.5 is so transmissible \u2014 and different enough from previous versions \u2014&nbsp;that even those with immunity from prior Omicron infections may not have to wait long&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2022\/05\/01\/omicron-subvariant-evade-antibody?utm_source=facebook&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=editorial&amp;utm_content=health-omicron&amp;fbclid=IwAR2ODrUnRknncwpNEmWb4eN-49siY3I73ccSUKiaalHoCTwK-TCPSLEW8Z8\">before falling ill again<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What they&#8217;re saying:<\/strong>&nbsp;&#8220;I had plenty of friends and family who said: &#8216;I didn&#8217;t want to get it but I&#8217;m sort of glad I got it because it&#8217;s out of the way and I won&#8217;t get it again&#8217;,&#8221; Bob Wachter, chairman of the University of California, San Francisco Department of Medicine told Axios. &#8220;Unfortunately that doesn&#8217;t hold the way it once did.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>&#8220;Even this one bit of good news people found in the gloom, it&#8217;s like, &#8216;Sorry&#8217;,&#8221; Wachter said.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>State of play:&nbsp;<\/strong>This week, the CDC reported BA.5 became the dominant variant in the U.S., accounting for nearly 54% of total COVID cases. Studies show extra mutations in the spike protein make the strain three or four times more resistant to antibodies, though it doesn&#8217;t appear to cause more serious illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Hospital admissions are starting to trend upward again,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/covid.cdc.gov\/covid-data-tracker\/#new-hospital-admissions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">CDC data shows<\/a>, though they&#8217;re still well below what was seen during the initial spread of Omicron.<\/li><li>It&#8217;s unclear whether that could be indicating an increase in patients in for COVID, or patients who happen to have COVID, Wachter said. &#8220;We&#8217;re up in hospitalizations around 20% but with a relatively small number of ICU patients,&#8221; Wachter said about COVID cases at UCSF.<\/li><li>In South Africa, the variant had no impact on hospitalizations while Portugal saw hospitalizations rise dramatically, Megan Ranney, academic dean at the Brown University School of Public Health told Axios.<\/li><li>&#8220;So the big unknown is what effect it\u2019s going to have on the health care system and the numbers of folks living with long COVID,&#8221; she said.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Yes, but:<\/strong>&nbsp;&#8220;I&#8217;m certainly hearing about more reinfections and more fairly quick reinfections than at any other time in the last two and a half years,&#8221; Wachter said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Zoom in:&nbsp;<\/strong>That is also largely the experience of the surge seen firsthand in New York City by Henry Chen, president of SOMOS Community Care, who serves as a primary care physician across three boroughs of the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>With this particular variant, he said: &#8220;The symptoms are pretty much the same but a little bit more severe than the last wave. It&#8217;s more high fever, body ache, sore throat and coughing,&#8221; Chen said, adding his patient roster is mostly vaccinated.<\/li><li>But it is occurring among patients who&#8217;d gotten the virus only three or four months ago, he said.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The big picture:&nbsp;<\/strong>Another summertime wave of cases could prolong the pandemic, coming after many public health precautions were lifted and with available vaccines losing their efficacy against the ever-evolving virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The bottom line:&nbsp;<\/strong>The messaging isn&#8217;t to panic, but to understand the virus is likely spreading in local communities much more than individuals realize due to shrinking testing programs&nbsp;<strong>\u2014<\/strong>&nbsp;and without the level of protection they might assume they have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>&#8220;If you don&#8217;t want to get sick, you still need to be taking at least some precautions,&#8221; Ranney said. &#8220;[COVID] is still very much among us.&#8221;<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Authors: Tina Reed, July 9, 2022&nbsp;Axios Vitals As this summer heats up, so has the spread of the hot new version of COVID-19. Why it matters:&nbsp;This subvariant of Omicron called [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,333,346],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ba-5-covid","category-mortality-morbidity","category-mutations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5069","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=5069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}