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As several states lift their COVID-19 restrictions, health experts are warning of a new sub-variant of Omicron called BA.2. The subvariant has been spotted in 74 countries and 47 U.S. states. Research suggests BA.2 could spread faster and may cause more severe disease, as well as be resistant to some of the current COVID-19 vaccines. The findings come from new lab experiments in Japan, which health experts emphasize haven't been peer-reviewed. "We are certainly watching this BA.2 this sub-lineage of Omicron because it is showing some kind of level of transmission advantage,” says Dr. Margaret Harris, of the World Health...

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...

Nearly 100 cases of the Omicron subvariant BA.2 have been identified in the United States, which is now present in nearly 50 countries around the world. As scientists continue to study whether it causes more or less severe illness than Omicron BA.1, officials in Denmark, where the subvariant is dominant, are weighing in. "There is no evidence that the BA.2 variant causes more disease, but it must be more contagious," Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said during a news conference on Wednesday. Preliminary calculations suggest BA.2 could be 1.5 times more infectious than BA.1, Denmark's top infectious disease authority, Statens...

A sub-variant of the omicron strain is reportedly in at least 40 countries and pushing the previous strain aside as its surge has finally declined slightly. The "stealth" omicron variant -- any many scientists have referred to it -- has been difficult to identify due to a lack of genetic characteristics used to initially identify the omicron variant, according to World Health Organization member Vipin M. Vashishtha. Omicron, known as B.1.1.529, has three subvariants: BA. 1, BA. 2, and BA. 3, with BA. 1 responsible for more than 99% of the cases amid the variant's surge and now BA.2 possibly...

[2:22 video clip] One person in Northern Beijing, 15 miles from Olympics, tests positive for Omicron so communist China locks down 20 million people.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said it is still too early to predict if the rapidly spreading Omicron variant will mark the end of the COVID-19 pandemic — and usher in the endemic stage of the illness. “When you talk about whether or not Omicron — because it’s as highly transmissible but apparently not as pathogenic, for example, as Delta — I would hope that that’s the case,” Fauci said Monday during the Davos Agenda, a virtual event held by the World Economic Forum.

Anthony Fauci still insists it’s too early to say the pandemic is waning due to the contagious but mild Omicron variant. Speaking online at the World Economic Forum, Fauci was asked if the virus that causes COVID-19 would finally become endemic in 2022. He responded by saying it’s too early to tell and that the world still appears to be in phase one of a five-phase pandemic, The New York Times reported. “Dr. Fauci also said that the world is still in the first of what he considered to be the five phases of the pandemic. The first is the...

A third Chinese city has locked down its residents because of a COVID-19 outbreak, raising the number confined to their homes in China to about 20 million people. The lockdown of Anyang, home to 5.5 million people, was announced late Monday after two cases of the omicron variant were reported. Residents are not allowed to go out and stores have been ordered shut except those selling necessities. Another 13 million people have been locked down in Xi’an for nearly three weeks, and 1.1 million more in Yuzhou for more than a week. It wasn’t clear how long the lockdown of...

Xi’an City (population 13 million) was locked down on 23 December 2021, with authorities citing as justification two ostensibly unrelated outbreaks: one of COVID-19 originating with six persons infected with the Delta variant from a flight from Pakistan, and the second of an unspecified seasonal haemorrhagic fever. Xi’an is a city three times larger than Los Angeles, responsible for 40% of Samsung’s global microchip output. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is all about frenetically maximising China’s economic output. It is simply not feasible that it would close such an important economic hub for six Delta cases, nor for any non-person-to-person...

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...

Scientists in Cyprus have found 25 cases of a strain of the coronavirus that they say combines elements of the delta and omicron variants, dubbing it “deltacron,” with a high proportion of the variant found in patients hospitalized for Covid-19, a professor involved in the identification of the new strain said Saturday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted again this week that data suggests the omicron variant of the Chinese coronavirus is “less severe” than the delta variant, although he said that is not reason enough to pull back from masking. “Multiple sources of now preliminary data indicate a decreased severity with Omicron,” Fauci said during a White House COVID-19 Response Team press briefing this week.

Unvaccinated Americans’ concern about the new omicron variant plunged at the end of December despite rising Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations that leave them most at risk, a new Morning Consult poll finds, as Americans broadly aren’t growing more concerned about the new variant or changing their lifestyles despite cases reaching record levels. Concern about omicron among the unvaccinated dropped from 52% to 44% between December 24 and 30, the Morning Consult poll found, which was conducted among 2,220 U.S. adults. Concern levels held steady among the vaccinated (going from 80% to 79%), while concern among all respondents went down from...

Experts are keeping a wary eye on yet another COVID-19 variant, this one with 46 mutations. It was detected in France and showed up in a traveler who recently arrived from a three-day stay in Cameroon, French researchers said in a pre-print study published on medRxiv, which means it has not yet been peer-reviewed. While researchers were monitoring the strain to ascertain how infectious it is or whether it poses a danger, experts emphasized that its discovery alone was not cause for alarm. Moreover, it was noted even before omicron took over the world stage and “has been on our...

The seriousness of a stagnant COVID-19 variant identified in France in November was downplayed by global health officials, who said they were still watching it closely on Tuesday. The variant, nicknamed IHU after the research hospital it was discovered in, “probably” originated in Cameroon, scientists said last week. It was identified in 12 patients in the Southern Alps around the same time the highly transmissible Omicron variant was surging in South Africa, officials said. The variant “has been on our radar,” Abdi Mahamud, a WHO incident manager on COVID, said at a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday, according to...

A top World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Tuesday that evidence is growing that shows the Omicron variant of the CCP virus is less severe compared to previous variants due to the disease affecting the upper respiratory tract.“We are seeing more and more studies pointing out that Omicron is infecting the upper part of the body. Unlike other ones, the lungs, who would be causing severe pneumonia,” WHO Incident Manager Abdi Mahamud said during a news conference in Geneva.Mahamud’s remark on the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus variant having a reduced risk of severe disease and death also echoes...

President Biden counted on the vaccines he inherited to make him the hero in the fight against COVID. However, things haven’t worked out as he hoped, and cases are surging to levels far higher than at any point in this pandemic. But through it all, the Biden administration has pushed vaccinations, even for kids, who are largely unaffected by COVID. Unfortunately, his efforts to get people vaccinated have run into a few snags. Remember the pause of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that caused a wave of vaccine hesitancy?However, now that the omicron variant is causing a record spike in...

A Danish health chief has said the Covid-19 Omicron variant is bringing about the end of the pandemic, saying 'we will have our normal lives back in two months'. Speaking to Danish TV 2, Tyra Grove Krause - the chief epidemiologist at Denmark's State Serum Institute - said a new study from the organisation found that the risk of hospitalisation from Omicron is half that seen with the Delta variant. This, she said, has given Danish authorities hope that the Covid-19 pandemic in Denmark could be over in two months. 'I think we will have that in the next two...

Antibodies, which are developed after the infection with delta strain of the coronavirus, may not protect from the new omicron strain and vice versa, Director General of the DNKOM Center for Molecular Genetic Studies Andrei Isayev told TASS. "Big number of mutations means that the virion of this strain structurally differs from virions of other strains - they have different spike proteins. That is why the antibodies developed by those who earlier had suffered from other strains or got vaccinated cannot brace omicron. That means that there will be no cross-immunity between the omicron and other strains. Accordingly, antibodies that...