BA.4 and BA.5 are now the dominant coronavirus lineages in the U.S., and they’re reviving our recent surge: from the plateau of recent weeks, national COVID-19 cases are clearly going up again. Reported cases rose 11% last week from the week prior. And, as always, this number is a significant undercount of true infections.
America’s Omicron subvariant surge continues to be in a plateau this week, with national COVID-19 case rates, hospitalization rates, and wastewater trends remaining fairly level or showing slight declines.
Sharing perspectives from three variant experts on how to keep monitoring the way that SARS-CoV-2 is mutating, as bonus material from a recent story about BA.4 and BA.5.
America’s current COVID-19 surge is being driven by BA.2 and its sublineage BA.2.12.1. But there are other versions of Omicron out there to which we need to pay attention—namely, BA.4 and BA.5. Here’s a brief FAQ on these two subvariants, including why scientists are concerned about them and where they’re spreading in the U.S.
The BA.2/BA.2.12.1 surge continues. According to the CDC, the number of new cases reported nationwide dropped last week, compared to the prior week; but this drop is more likely a result of the Memorial Day holiday than of an actual slowdown in transmission.
America’s largely-ignored BA.2 surge continues: the U.S. reported over 100,000 new cases a day last week, while an average of 3,600 new COVID-19 patients were admitted to hospitals each day. Both of these metrics rose about 8% from the week prior.
The Omicron BA.2 surge continues in the U.S., with a 19% increase in officially-reported COVID-19 cases in the past week to over 100,000 new cases a day. Of course, the official case numbers severely underestimate true infections, as PCR testing sites close and more people use rapid tests; actual case counts may be five or more times higher.
New COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the U.S., with an average of 85,000 cases reported nationally each day last week—double the daily average from three weeks ago. This is a significant undercount, of course, as the majority of COVID-19 tests conducted these days are done at home.
Nationwide, new COVID-19 cases have increased in the U.S. for the fourth week in a row. The daily case average has doubled since early April, and that’s just the cases that we’re reporting.
After weeks of me warning about it, a BA.2 surge is upon us. Nationwide, new COVID-19 cases have gone up for the third week in a row; we’ve seen a 68% increase since the last week of March.