Two Highly Transmissible South African Covid Variants Discovered in US

According to Deadline, two new and even more transmissible Omicron subvariants have been discovered in the United States.

Initially, both BA.4 and BA.5 were discovered in South Africa earlier this year but have recently produced a significant increase in cases in their country.

According to NBC News, the new subvariants have resulted in a minor increase in hospitalizations but no increase in deaths, according to Abdool Karim, a public health expert at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

As of Thursday, the country’s positivity rating has increased from 4% in mid-April to 19%. The number of cases has risen from a few hundred just a few weeks ago to over 6,000 each day.

Despite the spike, Karim said, “it’s too early to tell whether BA.4 will cause a fully-fledged wave.”

So far, only 10 cases of BA.4 and four instances of BA.5 have been reported in the United States, but given the virus’s highly transmissible nature, that number is sure to rise.

According to data released last month, approximately 60% of people in the United States, including three out of four children, have been infected with Omicron or another COVID strain. Before the emergence of these subvariants, the CDC estimated that nearly a third of the country’s population had caught Covid.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement that she believes the country has “a lot of protection” due to people getting vaccinated and boosted, as well as prior infection, and that “we cannot underscore enough, those who have detectable antibodies from infection, we still encourage them to get vaccinated.”