The rapidly spreading Omicron subvariant BA.5 is driving a recent surge of the coronavirus in the US, testing the rigorousness of our policy priorities. The worrisome news is that the new variant is not only spreading quickly, but it seems to be snaking past some of the immune defenses acquired by vaccinated people, or those infected by earlier variants.
Scientists dug through the available information to understand several pertaining questions like What do Omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 variants mean for the pandemic? What are the BA.4 and BA.5 variants? Why are the variants on the rise globally? What impact will BA.4 and BA.5 have on society? How well do vaccines work against the variants? and What will come next? This rapidly spreading variant BA.5 seems to be more infectious and alarming as there are reports of people who successfully managed to avoid the virus for close to three years finding it a little harder to continue that streak, and some who recently caught COVID are getting it again.
Despite the recent trend of alarmingly high transmissibility, the ongoing epidemiological studies suggest that successive COVID-19 waves are getting milder. However, scientists warn everyone not to take this trend for granted as viruses don’t necessarily evolve to become less deadly.
