- Another coronavirus variant is showing signs of derailing the state’s recovery from the winter COVID surge.
- Known as BA.2, this virus is an offshoot, or sublineage, of the omicron variant that just swept through New York State.
- BA.2 is doubling in proportion statewide every two weeks and represents about one in 10 sequenced cases.
As cases drop in New York, the risks of the new BA.2 variant derailing the state’s recovery from the winter covid surge is still high, different experts have different views on how highly fetal it can be states a report by Gothamist
The risk of new variant hitting NY Back
Just as New York case rates drop and officials roll back health requirements for schools and businesses, another coronavirus variant is showing signs of derailing the state’s recovery from the winter COVID surge.
Known as BA.2, this virus is an offshoot, or sublineage, of the omicron variant that just swept through New York State. It’s like a kid sister, and some experts even call it “Omicron 2.” But it spreads about 30% faster than its sibling — BA.1 — and is just as severe, according to the World Health Organization.
The ‘progress’ data of the new variant
Data from the New York State health department shows that BA.2 is quickly moving to dominate its viral kin. BA.2 is doubling in proportion statewide every two weeks and represents about one in 10 sequenced cases. This trend is backed up by similar data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the New York and New Jersey region.
The pattern is mind-boggling given what New York experienced this winter. Since omicron’s discovery in late November, the state has recorded 2.2 million COVID-19 cases — its biggest surge of the pandemic. Despite the immunity from those infections and 75% of New York residents being fully vaccinated, BA.2 is finding space to thrive.
The question now is whether BA.2 will stay in the background as New York’s winter surge peters out or lengthen the wave just as life is getting back to normal. This sister variant has been known to global scientists since mid-November but has just lingered on the sidelines in some places.
When BA.2 hit Denmark this winter, for example, it caused a second surge and lifted daily deaths to a new summit — mere weeks after the country had peaked with its sibling. But BA.2 is also spreading through the U.K. and South Africa without reversing progress against the disease.
What the experts think about BA.2
Some health experts think BA.2 won’t cause much harm in New York because of the area’s vaccination rate and because it is gaining ground so soon after the last surge.
“I don’t think it means a lot because there’s pretty good cross-immunity between BA.1 and BA.2 and because the omicron wave was so recent,” said Dr Bruce Farber, chief of public health and epidemiology at Northwell Health and the chief of infectious diseases at North Shore University Hospital and LIJ Medical Center. “People clearly have good immunity. It’s very good immunity for 90 days. It’s probably decent immunity for six months.”
But other researchers worry BA.2 could prey upon unvaccinated groups such as children and people who have not been boosted. Only 33% of New York residents have received a booster shot. So few health care workers have taken their additional doses that the state health department postponed the enforcement of a booster mandate for this workforce, citing fears of staffing shortages.
The omicron, BA.2 , Delta
These omicron variants are milder than their predecessor, the delta variant, which caused havoc last summer. But they’re also three to five times deadlier than pre-delta variants, according to a recent study from the CDC.
“Spread of the BA.2 subvariant could extend the winter surge,” said Bruce Y. Lee, a public health policy expert at CUNY and executive director of the research group PHICOR. “We know that cases have been going down, but the cases are still happening at a reasonably high level right now.”
COVID-19 risk is considered low in most of New York state and across the five boroughs, but its abundance is still much more than we’ve seen during past low points in the pandemic. The state, for example, is still averaging about 1,800 cases daily. During last summer’s lull, this average was six times lower.
The BA.2 subvariant has also weakened our ability to treat the disease. Earlier this winter, its potent sibling knocked out two of the four monoclonal antibody drugs used to remedy infections in high-risk individuals. Recent evidence from New York University suggests that BA.2 can bypass a third drug, sotrovimab.
“So it’s possible that we have even fewer resources for treating infections, say, in immunocompromised individuals or individuals that otherwise have a breakthrough infection,” said Dr Sam Scarpino, the managing director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute.
On the positive side, such breakthroughs in vaccinated people don’t appear more prevalent with BA.2 and reinfections overall appear to be rare. But every case of the coronavirus offers an opportunity for developing chronic symptoms — or long COVID.
Lee said New York could not rule out any future possibility with BA.2 at the moment. He, other health experts and city officials explained what people should know in the meantime and how to determine if a region is truly free from the clutches of the coronavirus.
Covid creating a surge and how wastewater is related to covid
Earlier this year, Gothamist reported on how the daily number of COVID tests was shrinking faster than ever before in New York City. That pattern has only deepened. The city started February giving out 60,000 PCR tests per day. By the end of the month, this number had almost been cut in half — to fewer than 40,000 daily tests.
The city has never seen a testing drop like this one, and it could be due to more people using at-home kits instead of going to clinics — or fewer concerns about the milder-but-not-mild omicron variant.
Michael Lanza, a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said the department still feels confident in its ability to monitor trends using the current surveillance data. He said the city relies on multiple lines of data to monitor the trajectory of community transmissions, such as lab tests, hospital reporting and public health surveillance of emergency department visits.
The city has also adopted the CDC’s new colour-coded system for judging a community’s risk of severe disease. It places a larger emphasis on hospital burden rather than the past habit of mostly focusing on case rates.
But some health experts worry this new system comes with blindspots, namely by ignoring the test positivity — the percentage of tests that come back showing an infection.
“I do worry that there’s no test-positivity percentage here. One way to keep your numbers is just not to test,” Dr Daniel Griffin, MD, PhD, infectious disease clinician and researcher at Columbia, told the This Week In Virology podcast on Saturday.
The test positivity used to be a check on deflating COVID risk because when it rises above 5%, it offers a signal for judging when a community is overburdened with coronavirus transmission.
Under the new colour-coded system, a locality could just avoid testing to stay below high-risk cutoffs.
“Well, it might keep you below the cutoff but then you might get hit with these lagging indicators,” Griffin said, referencing how COVID hospitalizations and deaths tend to lag behind infection spikes by a few weeks.
To avoid the pitfalls of the testing drop, leaders and the general public could turn to the sewers. Because infected people poop and pee out remnants of the coronavirus’s genetic code, wastewater surveillance has shown itself to be a reliable way to catch coronavirus spikes in New York weeks in advance.
“What we’ve seen is there’s a good two-week early warning sign,” said Dan Lang, who runs strategic operations for the New York State Department of Health’s Center for Environmental Health. “When [coronavirus in] wastewater starts to go up and we can confirm that the trend is going up, two weeks later, we’ll have an increase in cases.”
The wastewater dashboard for New York state shows most counties are improving though some areas around Warwick are seeing slight increases in coronavirus intensity. New York City doesn’t report to the state dashboard, but it is a part of a national tracker recently launched by the CDC. The federal tracker isn’t reporting recent data from the five boroughs, but the city health department says all is well.
“Wastewater surveillance data have been consistent with our clinical testing data,” said Lanza.
What’s at stake?
The New York City health department has reported an uptick in pediatric COVID-19 deaths since the start of the new year. Since then, the city’s death toll for kids rose by a half dozen — from 29 to 35 children over the course of the pandemic.
The rise comes after no fatalities had been recorded for this age group for months. In early October, the city raised the tally to 30 before dropping it back to 29 a month later. Regardless, six deaths in two months when the coronavirus hadn’t taken any children’s lives in nearly half a year speaks to the intensity of the omicron surge.
“Any death is tragic, but even more so when it is one of our littlest New Yorkers. These deaths were related to the very large surge of cases during the omicron wave,” said Lanza from the city health department. “Although severe outcomes among children are rare, the very high level of transmission and an unprecedented number of cases, unfortunately, resulted in some severe outcomes among children.”
These deaths are a reminder of what happens when a community cannot keep the coronavirus in check. But pandemic interruptions to education and business have consequences, too, and people are ready to move on from the pandemic. Public polling shows the New York public is split on the removal of COVID restrictions. About half of voters are ready to lose indoor masks and half want to keep them.
But with vaccination rates stalling and BA.2 lingering in the background, Scarpino, from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute, is worried about the nation being caught off guard again. He said a turning point last year revolved around mask mandates ending last summer even though the U.S. had missed its vaccination goals.
People were told to go about their lives if they were vaccinated, but so many people still lacked their shots, that the delta variant took off once everyone started mixing again.
“My biggest concern about BA.2 Is the potential erosion of trust in public health,” Scarpino said. “If we get this one wrong again, it kind of feels like replaying the tape that happened with the Delta variant.”
He said places like the U.K. may have escaped a BA.2 surge because the Brits have a higher rate of booster shots (50%) than the U.S. (28%). Another hypothesis is placed that experienced big delta waves over the summer, such as the U.K., might be better protected against BA.2 than locations that didn’t.
Did you subscribe to our daily Newsletter?
It’s Free! Click here to Subscribe
Source: Gothamist
Jullie blog is een absolute must-read voor iedereen die serieus is over webdesign. Ik ben altijd onder de indruk van de diepgang van jullie analyses en de praktische toepasbaarheid van jullie advies. | https://www.mafaweb.nl/
I really like reading through a post that can make men and women think. Also, thank you for allowing me to comment!
Your blog post had me hooked from the first sentence.
I really like reading through a post that can make men and women think. Also, thank you for allowing me to comment!
vibratör fiyat
Hallo! Ik ben onder de indruk van de creativiteit en het vakmanschap dat jullie tonen in jullie blogberichten. Het is duidelijk dat jullie een passie hebben voor webdesign en ontwikkeling. Ga zo door! | https://www.mafaweb.nl/
Ik ben echt onder de indruk van jullie portfolio en de projecten die jullie hebben afgerond. Jullie creativiteit en vakmanschap schijnen echt door in alles wat jullie doen. Ga zo door! | https://www.mafaweb.nl/
Jullie zijn echt meesters in jullie vakgebied! Ik ben altijd onder de indruk van de innovatieve oplossingen die jullie bedenken voor complexe problemen. Bedankt voor het delen van jullie wijsheid met ons. | https://www.mafaweb.nl/
Let me know what type of content you’d like to see more of in the future!
This blog post hit all the right notes!
I want to express my appreciation for the writer of this blog post. It’s clear they put a lot of effort and thought into their work, and it shows. From the informative content to the engaging writing style, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
I very delighted to find this internet site on bing, just what I was searching for as well saved to fav
กระโปรง
It was a perfect sharing admin. very useful mersii
Pretty! This has been a really wonderful post. Many thanks for providing these details.
You’re so awesome! I don’t believe I have read a single thing like that before. So great to find someone with some original thoughts on this topic. Really.. thank you for starting this up. This website is something that is needed on the internet, someone with a little originality!
This is really interesting, You’re a very skilled blogger. I’ve joined your feed and look forward to seeking more of your magnificent post. Also, I’ve shared your site in my social networks!
กล้องวงจรปิดยี่ห้อไหนดี 2565 รีวิวกล้องวงจรปิด กล้องวงจรปิด ยี่ห้อไหนดี 2565
กระโปรง ทรงเอ https://skirt.review55555.com/
Your articles always make me think and reflect on my own life Thank you for prompting me to be introspective and make positive changes
What topics would you like to see covered in future posts? Let us know in the comments.
Awesome! Its genuinely remarkable post, I have got much clear idea regarding from this post
I do not even understand how I ended up here, but I assumed this publish used to be great
Great information shared.. really enjoyed reading this post thank you author for sharing this post .. appreciated
MAFA’nın web tasarım ve yazılım blogu, sektördeki en güvenilir bilgileri sunuyor. Yazılarınızı okumak, benim için adeta birer ders niteliğinde. | https://www.mafaweb.com.tr/
Cialis Precio Dr Simi
(Admin)
Cialis 5 mg prezzo cialis 5 mg prezzo cialis 5 mg prezzo
MAFA’nın web tasarım ve yazılım hakkındaki içerikleri gerçekten çok etkileyici. Yazılarınızı okudukça, sektördeki trendleri ve en iyi uygulamaları daha iyi anlıyorum. | https://www.mafaweb.com.tr/
[รีวิว]รีวิวไฟตุ้มโซล่าเซลล์ วิธีติดตั้งไฟโซล่าเซลล์ รุ่นสว่างมาก สว่างตลอดคืน แผงใหญ่ 29×35 ซม. แบต 10Ah
กระโปรงพลีท
MAFA’nın web tasarım ve yazılım hakkındaki içerikleri, sektördeki yenilikleri ve en iyi uygulamaları öğrenmek için harika bir kaynak. Yazılarınızı okumak, benim için her zaman ilham verici. | https://www.mafaweb.com.tr/
very informative articles or reviews at this time.
MAFA’s blog has been instrumental in expanding my understanding of web design and software development. Your ability to simplify complex topics without sacrificing depth is truly impressive. | https://www.mafaweb.com.tr/
This blog post is packed with great content!
I’m consistently impressed by the quality and relevance of MAFA’s blog posts on web design and software. Your insights have helped me tackle challenges and stay ahead of the curve in this ever-evolving industry. | https://www.mafaweb.com.tr/
MAFA’nın web tasarım ve yazılım konusundaki içerikleri, bu alanda yeni başlayanlar için gerçekten kılavuz niteliğinde. Yazılarınızı okudukça, kendimi bu alanda daha güvenli hissediyorum. | https://www.mafaweb.com.tr/
From start to finish, your content is simply amazing. You have a talent for making complex topics easy to understand and I always come away with valuable insights.
ANTALYA FETÖ/PYD Soruşturması gerçekleri Banio Yapı Market Fetö/PYD soruşturmasında hangi bakan sayesinde neden kurtarıldı
For the reason that the admin of this site is working, no uncertainty very quickly it will be renowned, due to its quality contents.
I like the efforts you have put in this, regards for all the great content.
Your blog posts never fail to entertain and educate me. I especially enjoyed the recent one about [insert topic]. Keep up the great work!
Awesome! Its genuinely remarkable post, I have got much clear idea regarding from this post
There is definately a lot to find out about this subject. I like all the points you made
[รีวิว]ไฟโซล่าเซลล์ ยี่ห้อไหนดีสุด 2567 สปอตไลท์โซล่าเซลล์ ยี่ห้อไหนดี ด้านความคุ้มค่า ความคงทน ใช้งานนาน
The tips for navigating difficult conversations at work are practical and well-articulated. Conflict resolution is a skill that everyone can benefit from honing, and this article offers valuable guidance in that regard. | https://www.pinnedin.com/
You’re so awesome! I don’t believe I have read a single thing like that before. So great to find someone with some original thoughts on this topic. Really.. thank you for starting this up. This website is something that is needed on the internet, someone with a little originality!
Kudos to the author for shedding light on the challenges faced by women in male-dominated industries. It’s essential to address these disparities and work towards creating more inclusive environments. | https://www.pinnedin.com/
I truly appreciate your technique of writing a blog. I added it to my bookmark site list and will
Bestie art.
“Bandar Jaya Togel Midas seems to be a hub where chance meets community. It’s intriguing to ponder the sociocultural dynamics at play in such spaces, where individuals come together in pursuit of luck and fortune. https://demokratparti.org/bandar-jaya-togel-midas
Elektrikli çit güvenliği: Bahçenizi koruma altına alın.