Ômicron’s BA.5 subvariant is generating a new wave of infections, not only in the United States, but in other countries around the world.
According to one study, the subvariant is not only more contagious, but the symptoms of Covid-19 are often more severe.
Doctor Elmer Huerta summarizes the main features of this new subvariant. You can listen to the episode in Spanish on Spotify or on your favorite podcast platform, or read the transcript below.
Omicron and its subvariants: the Achilles heel of the pandemic
Since its appearance in late November 2021, the Omicron family of subvariants has spread across the planet.
The Ômicron family is characterized by high transmissibility and its ability to evade the antibodies produced by the natural infection and by the various vaccines against Covid-19.
The point is that—as in the domino effect—where the pieces fall one after the other like a waterfall, each of the new subvariants of Omicron is replacing the old one.
Thus, since the first Omicron BA.1 variant appeared in November 2021, it has quickly become the dominant variant in much of the world.
Its dominance position was surpassed — also quickly — by the subvariant BA.2 and its subvariant BA.2.12.1. The latter were immediately surpassed by the subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, the latter being the one that has been spreading very quickly in several countries around the world in recent weeks.
Infection rates of subvariant BA.5
In this regard, in the week ending July 2, subvariant BA.5 caused almost 54% of Covid-19 cases in the United States, and together with BA.4, it caused almost 70% of cases there.
This new phase of the pandemic is characterized by a large number of infected but, fortunately, has a relatively low number of deaths.
However, and this is of concern to public health authorities, the BA.5 subvariant may be causing a greater number of hospitalizations than the subvariants that preceded it.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the situation would not be a consequence of a greater severity of infections caused by the BA.5 subvariant, but would simply be a scenario favored by the very high number of infections, which would proportionally increase the number of hospitalizations.
But the whole point of the BA.5 circulation is that this subvariant is infecting millions of people who already had natural or acquired immunity against the coronavirus, which means people can get sick a second, third and even fourth time from Covid-19. .
Variant risks
In that sense, a Publication recent preprint format, still without peer review, warns that with each episode of reinfection, the risk of presenting more severe symptoms is greater. The findings go against the popular belief that a person who becomes infected more often would be developing greater immunity and, therefore, the disease would be increasingly mild.
The study, conducted in the United States, compared the electronic medical records of more than 250,000 people who tested positive for Covid-19 once with those of nearly 39,000 people who had two or more infections documented in their medical records.
All these cases of infection and reinfection were compared to a control group, made up of more than 5.3 million people who did not have Covid-19.
Of the nearly 39,000 people who had a reinfection, 36,000 had it a second time, approximately 2,200 a third time, and 246 a fourth time.
The results indicated that – compared to people who did not have the disease – people who had reinfections had more than twice the risk of dying and three times the risk of being hospitalized within six months of the last infection.
Post-infection symptoms with BA.5
It was also seen that people who were reinfected had a higher risk of:
- lung and heart problems
- fatigue
- digestive and kidney disorders
- diabetes
- neurological problems after each reinfection, symptoms that can last for at least six months
Worryingly, the likelihood of developing symptoms after reinfection was present regardless of vaccination status.
And the Centaurus subvariant?
A new subvariant of Ômicron, found in India and 12 other countries, called BA.2.75 and christened by the press as Centaurus, is spreading rapidly, so the World Health Organization (WHO) classified it as a variant under monitoring, as has eight new mutations in the Spike protein.
Where is the pandemic heading? Will other new variants appear? When will new subvariants of Ômicron stop being produced? Will new subvariants appear from time to time and will we have to get used to them until they become more harmless or will one of these subvariants change radically and cause more serious illness in people with intact immunity?
No one knows the answer to these questions, but what we have evidence so far is that the pandemic has become a serious threat to the weak and vulnerable in society.
The very elderly, those weakened by cancer, those with chronic heart disease and the immunosuppressed are currently the main victims of the pandemic.
If the trend continues like this, what health policies will governments develop to protect the most vulnerable in society and, at the same time, what will be our attitude to protect our most vulnerable friends and family?
We will see what happens in the near future, but again we must conclude that the great pandemic of 2019 is not over.
*Helmer Huerta is a physician, writer, communicator, and professor of medicine at George Washington University.
Source: CNN Brasil
