Alessandra Ferguson
(CNN) – Sub-variant BA.5 omicron is no longer the dominant cause of COVID-19 infections in the United States, according to estimates released Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC.)
Instead, a number of new sub-strains, underlines of BA.2, BA.4 and BA.5, are now responsible for most of the new infections in this country. Dr. Peter Hotez, director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, calls these new strains “scrabble variants” because they contain letters like X and Q that score highly in the game.
The new variants descend from slightly different branches of the omicron family tree, but have evolved to share some of the same changes to their genomes that help them evade our immunity to the virus.
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The new sub-variants are gaining ground against BA.5, which has dominated covid-19 infections in the United States since July. BA.5 now accounts for 49.6% of new infections in this country.
Two subvariants, BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, grew particularly rapidly. As of early October, each accounted for about 1 percent of new infections in the United States, but their prevalence nearly doubled every week. Together, they are now responsible for more than 1 in 4 new Covid-19 infections nationwide, according to data from the CDC.
BQ.1 is causing about 14% of new infections; BQ.1.1. it is causing 13% of new infections. BA.4.6 causes another 10%. BF.7 is the cause of 7.5% of new covid-19 diagnoses. A number of other new variants account for fewer covid-19 infections.
These variants are not evenly distributed in the United States. BQ.1.1 is now causing about 1 in 5 new Covid-19 contagion in the Northeast, where cases and hospitalizations are on the rise. But that sub-variant is causing only 3% of new Covid-19 infections in the Northwest.
These variants are slightly different from each other, but they all carry some of the same key mutations that help them evade immunity from previous vaccines and infections. This makes them more likely to cause infections and re-infections.
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In a statement released Friday, the World Health Organization’s SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution Technical Advisory Group said that lineages with the highest mutations of the growing subvariants, XBB and BQ.1, are not sufficiently. other than omicron to be considered separate variants of interest.
The XBB sub-variant was detected in the United States in September, but is not causing a significant number of cases in this country. It is particularly prevalent in Singapore, where it is now the dominant strain in circulation.
“Both sublines remain part of omicron, which remains a worrying variant,” the group said in a statement.
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