Free Republic

As winter inches closer, Dr. Fauci is sounding the alarm about a pair of “pretty troublesome” Covid variants. The two descendants of omicron’s BA.5 subvariant, called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, both have dangerous “qualities or characteristics that could evade some of the interventions we have,” Fauci told CBS News on Friday. The two sublineages are responsible for more than 10% of all current U.S. cases, according to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data — just one week after they weren’t even significant enough to list. There’s no guarantee that the two strains will eventually overtake BA.5 as the...

The CDC estimates that two Omicron subvariants experts have been watching closely now account for more than 7 percent of New England COVID-19 cases. The BA.4 subvariant accounts for 4.4 percent of cases, while the BA.5 subvariant accounts for 2.8 percent, the public health agency estimates. Nationally, BA.4 accounts for 5.4 percent of cases, while BA.5 accounts for an estimated 7.6 percent, according to the CDC estimates. The subvariants BA.2.12.1 and BA.2 still account for many more cases both nationally and in New England. In New England, BA.2.12.1 accounts for 64.5 percent of cases and BA.2 accounts for 28.3 percent...

The World Health Organization is analyzing a few dozen cases of two new sub-variants of the Omicron strain to determine how infectious and dangerous they might be, according to Reuters. The agency said it added BA.4 and BA.5 to its monitoring list because of their "additional mutations that need to be further studied to understand their impact on immune escape potential,” Reuters said. All versions of Omicron have proven to be highly transmissible. The BA.2 subvariant now represents about 94% of all sequenced cases but does not appear to cause severe disease, Reuters said. Last week, the CDC said BA.2...