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Disease tracking tools are monitoring the spread of new, highly transmissible versions of the omicron variant in New York and Europe, the latest evidence of the coronavirus’ ability to reconsider its genetic profile and pose a new threat.
It is too early to predict how far the new sub-options may spread and how sick people can get sick, said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
“When you look at what’s happening right now and try to tell the story of what might happen, you’re challenged,” he said. For now, scientists remain “watching and learning,” Osterholm added.
The first communities in the United States to say they were fighting new omicron subvariants were in downtown New York, around Syracuse and Lake Ontario.
New York State officials announced this week that two new subunits of omicron, called BA.2.12 and BA.2.12.1, have become dominant forms of coronavirus in the central part of the state. For weeks, infection rates in central New York were at least twice the national average, according to the state health department.
New subunits of omicron in New York have captured mutations that can help the virus enter cells faster and avoid immunity stimulated by vaccines and infections, said Andy Pekos, a virologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“Every time we see these mutations, we are a little worried, but at the moment it is difficult to estimate how much we are really worried about these options,” Pecos said.
Government officials said the sub-options were spreading 23 to 27 percent faster than the original version of the omicron BA.2, and that the sub-options were contributing to the growing number of cases.
“The department’s findings are the first reported cases of significant community spread due to new sub-options in the United States,” New York State Health officials said in a press release Wednesday. “Currently, there is no evidence of an increased severity of the disease from these sub-variants, although the department is closely monitoring any changes.
In March, the two sub-options accounted for more than 70 percent of reported covid-19 cases in downtown New York. So far in April, data show an increase of up to 90 percent of all new cases.
“That could change when more data becomes available,” said New York City Department of Health spokeswoman Samantha Fuld. “The department is closely monitoring the situation and will continue to communicate openly with New Yorkers.
Fuld said officials are expanding a coronavirus wastewater monitoring program “to cover all counties and include a sequence for analyzing covid-19 variants.”
Infections in downtown New York are close to the levels last seen during last year’s Delta Wave. Oswigo County had the highest reported infection rate in the state on Wednesday: 69.8 cases per 100,000 people in the last seven days. Neighboring Onondaga County had the third highest rate in the state at 53.3 per 100,000 people.
At a briefing Wednesday, Onondaga County Health Commissioner Indu Gupta said the sub-options were “more contagious than covid omicron” and that hospitalizations in the county were increasing, although officials said they hoped to avoid peaks reported during previous coronavirus waves using tests. , masking, vaccination, community contact and other tools.
“I am only here to remind everyone that the pandemic is still here, that people can be tired. I’m tired too. But the virus is not tired, “Gupta said. “I think it’s important to remember that he continues and changes his form, changes his style. It just challenges us, and we really have to take on his challenge. ”
Onondaga County Executive Director Ryan McMahon said officials theorized that the sub-options arrived from passengers in February.
“Contact tracking, which gives us a better roadmap, has not happened,” McMahon said, adding that the theory of travelers probably reflects “concentrated cases” in the same cluster of cities.
He predicts that the new sub-options will not be kept in downtown New York for long.
“The reality is that what’s happening in our community is starting to happen in New York and the Northeast,” McMahon said Wednesday. “And in two or three weeks, this will be a real challenge for some of these other communities. New York and New York counties have 45 cases per 100,000 on average in seven days. We are 52. This is a much bigger challenge for a community of this size. ”
Pekos, a Hopkins virologist, said some of the increase in cases could be expected, as the sub-options appear at the same time as most public health interventions, such as mask mandates, have been canceled.
“We need to see some increase in cases,” Pecos said. “What we hope is that this will now be a manageable increase.”
At the moment, the public should not worry too much about the new sublines, Pecos added, although scientists are watching them closely. Researchers will have a better idea of whether the new sub-options are really more contagious and potentially more dangerous in the coming weeks.
“Omicron is evolving to be perhaps even better at infecting people – the big question is how much better will it be?” Pekos said. “This is something we will have to wait and see.”
There is another subvariant called omicron XE reported in the United Kingdom and some other countries, including Israel and Thailand. XE is a recombinant variant, meaning that it combines genetic material from two versions of omicron, BA.1 and BA.2.
An XE infection was reported in Hawaii, among several cases reported in the United States as of Friday.
“The Omicron XE recombinant line, originally identified in the United Kingdom, was recently discovered in Hawaii and contains genetic material derived from BA.1 and BA.2,” according to a report released Wednesday by the state’s health department.
As of 5 April, the British authorities had received reports of 1,125 cases of HE, which is less than 1% of the cases in that country. Early, unconvincing data shows that XE is spreading 12 to 21 percent faster than BA.2, according to a report last week by the UK Health Security Agency.
The Japanese Ministry of Health announced on Monday that the first case of HE in that country was found in a 30-year-old woman who arrived at Narita International Airport in Tokyo from the United States on March 26. The ministry said the woman, whose nationality was not disclosed, was asymptomatic, according to the Japan Times.
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expect new lines of the virus to emerge, and the agency will monitor how these sub-options change the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
“While the distribution of lines and sub-lines may vary, what we are focusing on is monitoring any changes in disease severity caused by Omicron lines,” CDC spokesman Nicolas Spinelli said in an email.
The CDC stressed that the same tools that have helped slow the spread of past options are likely to be continue to be useful against new ones.
Osterholm of the University of Minnesota says scientists still don’t understand why so many subicarns of omicron have have emerged in recent months.
To prepare for a potential jump caused by a new sub-option, scientists need to closely monitor the number of cases, hospitalizations and other indicators. But reduced testing capacity in the United States could slow public health responses to any particularly virulent options, Osterholm said, and the number of hospitalizations will be a lagging indicator, weeks after the growing number of cases.
“Now we need to know, more than ever, what’s going on there,” Osterholm said. “Meanwhile, it’s getting harder to do testing.”
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