New Coronavirus News from 29 Apr 2022

State health leaders warn new COVID variant is more transmissible than past variants [KOMO News, 29 Apr 2022]

by Jackie Kent

State virologists are warning the newest COVID-19 variant in Washington is even more transmissible than previous variants. There’s still a lot researchers still don’t know about the new BA.2.12.1 subvariant.

Take a walk near downtown Seattle and people have mixed reaction to hearing about the new, highly transmissible omicron subvariant.

For the first time, the state department of health’s latest variant report shows BA.2.12.1 accounts for about 5-percent of sequenced cases.

The U.W. Virology lab does its own sequencing for King County.

“It’s just another reminder that although sometimes it feels like it COVID is not done with us yet,” said Dr. Pavitra Roychoudhury with the UW Medicine Virology Lab.

She warns it’s proving to be even more transmissible than previous variants and says scientists are also trying to figure out how effective vaccines are against it.

“We’ll have to wait to get that kind of data," Roychoudhury said. "For example, we know that prior infection with BA.1 does confer some amount of protection towards BA.2 so that kind of data will come slowly for this particular subvariant."

Officials are hoping some of the immunity gained from the Omicron wave back in January, and the protection from the vaccine will prevent another big spike in cases.

“We’re not seeing that same level of surge," Roychoudhury said. "With that being said, we are seeing a rise in cases so we're definitely watching and waiting and hoping that it's not as bad."

She added it’s still too soon to know how severe COVID-19 symptoms may be with this new subvariant, or how it might impact hospitals. They expect to have have a lot more data soon as they continue their research.

The U.W. Virology Lab dashboard shows there have been no cases of this new subvariant found in King County as of the most recent reporting period two weeks ago.

Another COVID variant is rapidly spreading in California. Should you worry about BA.2.12.1? [San Francisco Chronicle, 29 Apr 2022]

by Erin Allday

A new omicron subvariant is rapidly spreading in California. The COVID variant is more infectious than its predecessors and could make up half of new COVID cases “in a matter of days,” health officials said. Nurses at Adventist Health hospital in Sonora, Calif. put on PPE before checking on a COVID patient in March, 2022.

Max Whittaker/Special to The Chronicle
Yet another omicron offspring, once again more infectious than its predecessors, is climbing rapidly in California and could make up half of new cases “in a matter of days,” health officials said.

It’s unclear whether the coronavirus subvariant — known as BA.2.12.1 — will hasten the rising swell of cases across the state, including in the Bay Area. But it’s believed to be driving a surge in the New York region and other parts of the Northeast, where it already makes up nearly 60% of cases, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The most recent CDC estimates, through the week ending April 23, show the BA.2.12.1 subvariant making up about 15% of cases that undergo genomic sequencing in the Western United States; the California Department of Public Health reports a similar breakdown for the state.

According to disease modeling by the state, “BA.2.12.1 is likely to account for 50% of positive cases in California within a few days,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of public health for Los Angeles County, in a briefing Thursday.

BA.2.12.1 is a subvariant of BA.2, which is itself a subvariant of the original omicron variant that swept over the globe last November and December and drove the United States’ winter surge.

The BA.2 subvariant replaced the original omicron as the dominant strain in the United States toward the end of March; BA.2 now makes up about 80% of cases in the Western United States, according to the CDC. The original omicron makes up less than 5% of cases in the Western U.S. now and has essentially disappeared in the Northeast.

Coronavirus cases have climbed about 70% in California since the beginning of April, and they’ve increased 155% in the Bay Area over the same time period. Health experts believe the recent increases are largely because of the more infectious variants now circulating.

The BA.2 subvariant is thought to be about 1.5 times more infectious than the original omicron variant, and BA.2.12.1 may be 20% to 30% more infectious than BA.2.

Neither subvariant appears to cause more serious illness than its predecessor. But with a rapid climb in cases in New York and surrounding states, COVID hospitalizations are rising there too.
Hospitalizations remain low in California, though they have begun creeping up over the past week.

The Bay Area has reported a more pronounced spike in cases than most of the rest of California, though it’s unclear why. As of last week, the Bay Area was reporting roughly 23 cases per 100,000 residents a day, compared with 14 cases per 100,000 for the state as a whole.

Dr. Sara Cody, the Santa Clara County health officer, suggested that the more infectious variants may have gotten a foothold in this region before other parts of the state, giving the Bay Area a head start on the next swell. “It’s possible that BA.2 emerged here first,” Cody said.

Proving whether one or both of the subvariants took off in the Bay Area ahead of the rest of the state is difficult. The state does not break down variant data by county, and not all counties report their own data. For those counties that do report variants, most identified their first BA.2.12.1 cases in the past week or two.

Cody added that the huge omicron wave led to “pretty good community-wise immunity,” due to so many people being infected and therefore somewhat protected against the next variant. “But it’s not enough. We’re still seeing a swell.”

Dr. Benjamin Pinsky, head of the Stanford Clinical Virology Laboratory, which does genomic sequencing of the coronavirus for several Bay Area counties, said the BA.2.12.1 variant and its sibling, BA.2.12, made up about 10% of sequences in his most recent report, from about two weeks ago.

He noted that one reason scientists are keeping a close eye on BA.2.12.1 is because it has a mutation — called L452Q — that was also found in a highly infectious variant called lambda that circulated widely in South America. A similar mutation, called L452R, was the defining trait of the California variant, known as epsilon, that drove the winter 2020 to 2021 surge in the Western United States.

Pinsky’s lab also recently found its first case of the variant known as XE, which is a combination of the original omicron variant and BA.2.

“There’s not a ton of (XE) in the United States, but that is the one that folks were concerned about in the United Kingdom,” Pinsky said.

Ferrer said that although it does not appear that BA.2.12.1 causes more severe illness, the speed at which the subvariant and its parent, BA.2, have taken over parts of the country — and so soon after omicron roared across the globe — signals that the coronavirus remains an unpredictable threat.

“With so many new variants cropping up, we just don’t know if we’re on this trajectory where we’re going to see milder and milder illness. I would suggest we not ... be overly optimistic,” Ferrer said. “Recognize this is a virus that mutates fairly rapidly and fairly dramatically.”

Indeed, yet another subvariant, BA.4, appears to be driving up cases in South Africa — among the first countries to identify omicron last November. So far, like the rest of its family BA.4 seems to be somewhat more infectious than its predecessor but not causing more severe illness.