![]() ![]() "With cases and hospitalizations rising again as we enter the summer period, I urge everybody to get vaccinated and boosted as quickly as possible. The European Union said Monday it's “critical” that authorities in the 27-nation bloc consider giving second coronavirus booster shots to people between the ages of 60 and 79 years and other vulnerable people, as a new wave of the pandemic sweeps over the continent. If more people are fully vaccinated, the opportunity for the virus to spread and mutate decreases, they contend. The best way to prevent new variants, Grubaugh and other doctors say, is to get vaccinated and booster shots. "As long as there is a COVID-19 outbreak somewhere in the world, there is going to be something new that emerges.” What steps can you take to protect yourself? “Delta was never going to be the last variant-and Omicron is not going to be the last one," he said, according to an article on the school's website. Nathan Grubaugh, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, said people need to understand that variants like Omicron and BA.5 are a natural part of the progression of the virus. "There’s really no clear evidence that they’re more or less likely to make people sick and cause severe illness and death," stated Montefiori.ĭr. While they spread quicker than any others, BA.4 and BA.5 haven’t been found to cause more severe disease, according to doctors. He said that while there is no evidence the variants make people more sick than earlier strains of the virus, “the increase in transmission among older age groups is starting to translate into severe disease.”įirst COVID Symptoms: How to Recognize the Onset of the Virus If you had COVID before, how protected are you from BA.5?įrancois Balloux, the director of the University College London Genetics Institute, said while BA.1 and BA.2 are "pretty different.BA.2, BA.4 and B.5 from a neutralizing antibody perspective are essentially interchangeable."īecause of that, people who had BA.2 infections may have some protection from the latest subvariants, he said. The European Medicines Agency’s Marco Cavaleri told an online briefing that the BA.4 and BA.5 mutations are expected to become dominant across the continent, “likely replacing all other variants by the end of July.” That subvariant replaced omicron as the U.S.'s dominant version of the coronavirus in April. BA.4, a similar subvariant, accounted for nearly 17% more, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.ĭavid Montefiori, a professor at the Human Vaccine Institute at Duke University Medical Center, told NBC News that BA.4 and BA.5 are about three times less sensitive to neutralizing antibodies from existing COVID vaccines than the original version of the omicron variant, BA.1. Additional research suggests that BA.4 and BA.5 are four times more resistant to antibodies from vaccines than BA.2. ![]() What should you know about BA.5?Īs of July 2, the subvariant BA.5 was responsible for nearly 54% of COVID cases in the U.S. ![]() At this point, there doesn't appear to be a difference in the symptoms seen in BA.4 or BA.5 cases, compared to earlier omicron strains. The symptoms are consistent with those reported in the spring, when the BA.2 subvariant was dominant in the country.Īccording to the University of California Davis Health, the reported symptoms of BA.5 are similar to previous COVID variants: fever, runny nose, coughing, sore throat, headaches, muscle pain and fatigue. Less than one-third of people surveyed reported fevers, according to data from the Zoe COVID Symptom Study, which allows people to self-report symptoms through smartphone apps. The U.K., where BA.4 and BA.5 infections also account for the majority of recent COVID cases, reported runny nose, sore throat, headache, persistent cough and fatigue as its most common symptoms last week. That shift could lead to a nasal COVID vaccine in the future, according to Arwady. The latest variants tend to sit in the nasal passage and cause infection, she said, instead of settling in the lungs. Some doctors and researchers believe that because these new variants spread so rapidly, they more commonly impact mucosal immunity as opposed to longer-lasting immunity, Arwady noted. It's a more virulent infection," Arwady said during a Facebook live last week.Īrwady has also said previously that a lingering cough is common among those infected by the most recent COVID variants. "Nothing really significantly different, I would say, but just more symptoms. Sign up for the weekly Chicago Catch-Up newsletter here. Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. ![]()
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