Omicron BA.5: One Variant To Rule Them All…For Now
06.07.2022 - 06:31
/ deadline.com
Today, the more-infectious Omicron BA.5 subvariant is officially the dominant Covid strain in the U.S. Up until how, BA.5 has been tied to its sister Omicron subvariant, BA.4, as both had steadily outcompeted BA.2.12.1 — which itself had been driving cases for the past month or so.
After the original Omicron variant appeared on U.S. shores late last year and caused the deadliest wave of the pandemic, a succession of Omicron subvariants have come and gone: BA.1.1, BA.2, BA.2.12.1 and now BA.4 and BA.5.
BA.5 was first identified in South Africa on February 26. Less than a month ago, on June 4, it only accounted for 9.6% of cases in the U.S., while predecessor BA.2.12.1 sat atop the heap at 62%. Today, the CDC estimates the subvarient is responsible for about 54% of new cases here. That’s double BA.2.12.1, which now accounts for 27% of infections. BA.5’s rise also leaves sister subvariant BA.4 in the dust at 16%. It’s a faster ascention than that of any other variant over the course of the pandemic. And there’ve been a lot of them.
One reason BA.5 is so dominant is that it seems to be more transmissible than even BA.2.12.1 — (BA.4 has some of the same key spike protein mutations as BA.5, but hasn’t had the same impact.
“The Omicron sub-variant BA.5 is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen,” said Eric Topal, who is Founder and Director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, Professor of Molecular Medicine and Executive Vice-President of Scripps Research, in a substack post last week. “It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility, well beyond Omicron (BA.1) and other Omicron family variants that we’ve seen.”
In other words, BA.5 is much