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Since the last weekly review: New cases up 35.3% (from very low levels) New Hospitalizations up 8.3% Deaths down 9.4% Test Positivity Rate 5.3% (up from 3.7% last week) Variants: About 100% of new cases are Omicron, about 95% of those are the sub-variant BA.2 family, with about 19% of the total being the currently fastest growing sub-variant (BA.2.12.1).

Since the prior weekly report: New Cases UP 4.9% (reversing a downward trend since mid-January) New Hospitalizations down 10.3% Deaths down 22.1% Variants: About 100% Omicron, BA.2 is projected to be 72.2% of that. Test Positivity up to 3.1% (second week of rise)

A new coronavirus variant that could be the most transmissible yet has been identified in the United Kingdom. The variant, known as XE, is a combination of the omicron subvariants BA.1 and BA.2. It was first detected in the U.K. on Jan. 19, according to the World Health Organization, though it has since been reported in India as well. As of late March, roughly 600 cases of it were identified.

Since the last weekly report: Cases down 3% New hospitalizations down 15.8% Deaths down 14.4% Variants: Omicron is estimated to be about 100% of new cases. Of that, sub-lineage BA.2 is projected to be 54.9% Test positivity rate is 2.4% (up slightly from 2.2% last week), but the total number of tests declined by 5.9%.

Since the last weekly summary: Cases Down 5.4% New Hospitalizations Down 21.0% Deaths Down 29.5% Test Positivity Rate steady at 2.2% Variants: About 100% Omicron, with the BA.2 sub-variant growing to 34.9% of those.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, by not ruling out further COVID-19 restrictions over the disease's latest variant, is "misinterpreting the data," Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday on Newsmax. "If you look at the data right now, we have the lowest amount of people getting infected each day," the Kentucky Republican said on Newsmax's "National Report." "If you look at the data, we have the lowest amount of people in the intensive care unit. If you look at the data, we have the lowest amount of people dying since the pandemic began. So really, what we're seeing is the waning ebb of the...

The highly transmissible subvariant of omicron known as BA.2, or “stealth omicron,” is the dominant strain circulating worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Virtually all new coronavirus cases reported to WHO are from omicron, which has several subvariants. The BA.2 subvariant was responsible for nearly 86% of the omicron cases sequenced over the past month, according to the organization. “Among the major omicron descendent lineages, weekly trends show that the relative proportion of BA.2 has increased steadily since the end of 2021, with BA.2 becoming the dominant lineage by week seven of 2022,” WHO wrote in a report released...

"We generally lag about three weeks or so behind the U.K. in the dynamics of what goes on with the outbreak," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "So if we are going to see an uptick, we should start seeing it within the next week or so."

White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said Sunday that he does not believe the new variant of the coronavirus will lead to a surge in cases or a return to pandemic lockdowns. During an appearance on ABC's "This Week," Fauci told host George Stephanopoulos that the new BA.2 variant is more transmissible than the original omicron variant of the virus. He said it is about 50-60 percent more transmissible and could become the dominant variant in the U.S. According to Fauci, the new variant is "about 80 plus percent, 85 percent of the isolate" whereas, in the U.S., it...

For the week ending 18 March 2022: New Cases down 16.6% New Hospitalizations down 27.2% Deaths down 11.4% Variants - About 100% Omicron, the BA.2 sub-variant has grown to 23% of those. Test Positivity Rate is now down to 2.2%. Vaccinations decreased 17.6% from the previous week.

A more infectious type of the Omicron variant has surged to account for more than a third of global Covid-19 cases sequenced recently, adding to the debate about whether countries are ready for full reopening. Health authorities are examining whether the subvariant of Omicron, known as BA.2, could extend the length of Covid-19 waves that have peaked recently in Europe, Japan and some other places. “We’re looking not only at how quickly those peaks go up, but how they come down,” World Health Organization epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said. “And as the decline in cases occurs…we also need to look...

The BA.2 virus-- a subvariant of the Omicron coronavirus variant-- isn't just spreading faster than its distant cousin, it may also cause more severe disease and appears capable of thwarting some of the key weapons we have against Covid-19, new research suggests. New lab experiments from Japan show that BA.2 may have features that make it as capable of causing serious illness as older variants of Covid-19, including Delta. And like Omicron, it appears to largely escape the immunity created by vaccines. A booster shot restores protection, making illness after infection about 74% less likely. BA.2 is also resistant to...

There’s yet another twist in the pandemic: The omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, now has a “subvariant” that seems to spread even more quickly than any other version of the coronavirus to date. The good news for now is that vaccines still appear to protect against it. But because it’s so transmissible, scientists are racing to figure out what harm it could cause. The original omicron variant, which scientists call BA.1 or B.1.1.529, was until recently the most transmissible known version of the virus. In many countries, it caused some of the steepest and tallest peaks...

A subvariant of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, known as BA2, has arrived in Israel and 20 cases of it have already been detected in the country, Kan 11 News reported on Thursday. According to the report, BA2 is currently known to have even more mutations than the original Omicron, and as such, some scientists around the world have speculated that it may be more violent. However, at the moment this is only a hypothesis, and it is important to note that there is no absolute certainty and knowledge about this. The subspecies was first seen in China a few...

A new version of the Omicron coronavirus variant was designated on Tuesday that experts say will be harder to track because of its genetics. The new lineage, called BA.2, has been spotted seven times so far across South Africa, Australia, and Canada. BA.2 is genetically quite different from the original Omicron lineage, now called BA.1, which has been spreading across the world, said Francois Balloux, the director of the University College London Genetics Institute, per The Guardian. Crucially, it doesn't have the characteristic S-gene dropout mutation which allows Omicron BA.1 to be easily identified via PCR test results, the main...