Skip to main content

Coronavirus Watch: 'Stealth omicron' slightly more infectious

Grace Hauck   | Paste BN

A new version of the omicron variant known as BA.2 — or "stealth omicron" — is slightly more infectious than the original version of the variant, the head of the CDC said.

In a briefing, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the new version of the variant — a "subvariant" — "does have a modest transmission advantage" over the original variant.

"However, it’s not nearly the transmission advantage that we’ve seen between omicron and delta," Walensky said. "We have not seen any studies that suggest it’s more severe, nor have we seen studies that suggest that it will evade our vaccines any more so than omicron has already, and in fact that our vaccines would work just like they have with omicron."

It's Friday, and this is Coronavirus Watch from the Paste BN Network. Here's more news to know:

  • The U.S. is on the brink of surpassing 900,000 COVID-19 deaths amid positive data indicating daily infections and hospitalizations are decreasing. The respite, however, could be short-lived.
  • The Beijing Olympics kicked off Friday. Amid extraordinary COVID-19 restrictions, NBC has been dealt "the worst hand imaginable," said Bob Costas, who served as the network’s Olympics prime-time host for 25 years.
  • Austria became the first country in the European Union to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for all adults after the upper house of the Austrian parliament voted in favor of the law Thursday, the Guardian reported.
  • How do U.S. vaccination rates compare? Countries including Canada, Brazil, China, Australia and much of the European Union have already passed the WHO's midyear target of vaccinating at least 70% of their populations. But with about 64% of the population fully vaccinated, the U.S. is one of more than 100 countries that are on track to fall short of the target, according to Our World in Data, an online research and data publication.

See our COVID-19 resource guide here. See total reported cases and deaths here. On vaccinations: About 75% of people in the U.S. have received at least one vaccine shot, and about 64% are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

– Grace Hauck, Paste BN breaking news reporter, @grace_hauck

Facebook Twitter Email