California could see coronavirus uptick this spring because of omicron subvariant BA.2
Coronavirus cases are on the upswing worldwide, prompting some officials to warn that California could see increases this spring because of the omicron subvariant BA.2 even though cases so far have been modest.
The World Health Organization has recorded the first week-over-week increase in global coronavirus cases since late January, with cases rising 8% compared with the previous week. With infections rising in parts of Africa, Asia and Europe, officials say they wouldn’t be surprised if new cases climbed again in the U.S. — and in California — this spring.
What remains unclear is whether a national increase would be a ripple or a deluge that could again strain hospitals.
So far, coronavirus cases are still declining across California.
But even with the decline, officials are closely watching how the omicron subvariant BA.2 — which is 30% to 60% more contagious than the original omicron variant — is comprising a growing percentage of new cases.
Nationally, BA.2 represented an estimated 23% of variants analyzed between March 6 and March 12, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The previous week, the subvariant represented an estimated 14% of virus cases analyzed nationally. BA.2 was found most frequently in the Northeast, where it represented nearly 40% of coronavirus cases; on the West Coast, it represented about 25% of cases.
Scripps Research Translational Institute microbiologist Kristian Andersen projected on Twitter last week that in San Diego County, almost all new coronavirus infections will be of the BA.2 subvariant in the near future.
The growth of BA.2 has been more mixed elsewhere. In L.A. County, BA.2 comprised 6.4% of coronavirus specimens analyzed between Feb. 20 and Feb. 26, the most recent data available; a week earlier, it was 5%, according to Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.
In Northern California’s most populous county, Santa Clara County, most of the omicron cases being detected in the Palo Alto area are of the BA.2 subvariant, but that gets less prevalent farther south, such as in Gilroy.
“Interestingly — and this gives me hope — it is not driving up the levels overall. I don’t know why, but it isn’t,” Dr. Sara Cody, the Santa Clara County public health director and health officer, said last week. “But we’re watching that very, very carefully.”
There’s no certainty that L.A. County will experience the kind of BA.2 surges that many European countries are observing now, Ferrer said, but it remains quite possible it could become a dominant strain.
BA.2 is probably not the only reason other countries are seeing sharp increases in coronavirus cases, she added; the jumps come as many public health measures that limited coronavirus transmission have been rescinded and as protection from vaccinations and booster shots have waned over time.
It’s essential that more be done to get more people vaccinated and boosted, especially those who are vulnerable, Ferrer said. She expressed alarm about the lack of action to continue federal funding vaccination, testing and treatment efforts for uninsured residents.
Ferrer said that because of the stalemate in Washington, many of L.A. County’s community groups no longer will be reimbursed for vaccinated or testing uninsured people as of Tuesday, a situation that “wrecks our network immediately.”
“My hope is that, swiftly, our federal elected officials are going to work together with the White House to get a package passed,” Ferrer said. “We need to be prepared for a potential challenge in the future — and in the near future. We don’t want to be caught off guard; we need to have supply chains in place; we need people to have [personal protective equipment].”
Cody echoed Ferrer’s statements, warning that “COVID funding has essentially collapsed. That is breathtaking and shocking in the middle of a global pandemic.”
Myoung Cha, chief strategy officer at San Francisco-based Carbon Health and former head of strategic initiatives at Apple Health, warned in a series of tweets Saturday that the “BA.2 cycle has already started here and will be in full bloom” in about two to three weeks, “with a much bigger surge than anyone saw coming.”
Potential signs of worry stem from the U.S. having lower vaccination and booster rates than Europe, less testing and a longer period of waning immunity. Cha suggested that BA.2 cases would hit the Northeast first, but predicting trends in the U.S. could be hampered by at-home rapid tests, whose results are not reported to the government, as opposed to lab-based PCR tests, which are reported to officials.
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