Top U.S. health authorities cautioned on Tuesday that there has been an increase in COVID-19 cases caused by the highly contagious Omicron subvariant BA.5, but emphasized that the nation has the resources — such as vaccinations and antiviral medications — to stop individuals from becoming dangerously ill.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, stated during a virtual press conference, “We know how to control it. “We can avert life-threatening sickness. We can lessen COVID-19’s disturbances while also saving lives.
The BA.5 subvariant is now responsible for 65 percent of the COVID-19 cases now present in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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President Biden’s main medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, stated that BA.5 “significantly evades neutralizing antibodies” produced in those who have been immunized or previously infected.
Fauci recommended Americans to keep up with their COVID vaccinations, saying that the existing vaccines are “still effective at reducing catastrophic COVID-19 outcomes” including hospitalization and death.
The threat to you is currently, he declared. “If you are not fully immunized, you are putting yourself at a higher risk that may be reduced by becoming immunized.”
The warnings Tuesday from Fauci and other top COVID officials come as the U.S. transitions into what experts describe as a new phase of the pandemic.
Call it the Age of Reinfection.
“BA.5 puts the nail in the coffin of the myth that the virus will evolve into a milder form and fade away,” Dr. Eric Topol, founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, wrote Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times. “We could easily see more variants — indeed a whole new family with more extensive immune evasion and growth advantage — in the months ahead.”
At first, COVID-19 appeared to be a straightforward illness. no more. The main offender is BA.5, which has a wide variety of alterations that make it more adept than any of its predecessors in evading the immune defenses we’ve developed through two and a half years of infection and vaccination and infecting us anyway.
The elusive variants Delta and previous iterations of Omicron were also able to elude first-generation antibodies, making BA.5 not the only one we’ve seen. The old beliefs that a recent infection completely protects you from rapid reinfection no longer hold true for BA.5 and its closely related cousin, BA.4. Instead, BA.5 and BA.4 evolved specifically to elude the massive amounts of fresh immunity left behind by the original iteration of Omicron after it swept the world last winter.
“We do know [BA.5] to be more transmissible and more immune-evading,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at Tuesday’s briefing. “People with prior infection, even with BA.1 or BA.2, are likely still at risk for BA.4 and BA.5.”
None of this will bring the United States to a standstill. Despite high case counts, there are now fewer COVID patients in critical care units in the United States than there were during earlier pandemic stages, and the country’s death rate (between 300 and 400 per day) is almost at an all-time low. Improved treatment choices, repeated vaccinations, and acquired immunity are all very helpful.
