The new BA.5 strain of the virus that causes COVID is a ‘different beast’ to those we’ve seen before – more infectious and better able to evade immune responses – and ‘we need to change our thinking’ about how to protect ourselves against it, according to a data-packed Twitter thread posted today by Dr. Bob Wachter, UCSF’s chair of medicine.
BA.5, a sub-variant of the Omicron family that has an altered version of the virus’s notorious ‘spike’ protein, will soon become the dominant strain of the virus in the US, meaning “its behavior will determine our fate for the next few months, until or burn out by infecting so many people, or be replaced by a variant that is even better at infecting people,” Wachter wrote.
“Neither is a happy scenario,” he added.
The number of new COVID cases per day is at a national level and has decreased significantly since January. The same is true for the number of COVID hospitalizations at UCSF Health System, Wachter said. However, the true spread of COVID is harder to understand these days because so many people are being tested with home kits.
And BA.5 could cause a prolonged plateau or even a new surge of infections and possibly hospitalizations because it infects more easily and is also better at evading immune responses — even in vaccinated people, Wachter wrote.
While he stressed that vaccines and boosters “remain extremely valuable in preventing a severe case” that could lead to hospitalization or death, the increased slipperiness of BA.5 means that existing vaccines are likely to be less effective in preventing mild cases of COVID or stopping transmission in the first place. In addition, he wrote, previous infection with a different variant “no longer confers robust protection against re-infection” with BA.5.
What is a person to do then?
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Wachter said it depends on how badly you want to avoid getting COVID. Personally, he said he doesn’t want to risk getting “long COVID” and the debilitating symptoms that come with it, “So I’m still avoiding eating indoors and will continue to wear my N95 in crowded indoor spaces until the cases drop significantly.” ” Others may make different choices.
As for governments, he said, if BA.5 causes a spike in hospitalizations, “especially if we also have staff shortages,” going back to mask mandates “would be the right thing to do.” But Wachter acknowledged that there will likely be fierce resistance to new mask-wearing requirements, especially outside blue states, regardless of the danger.
“Most people have thrown off their masks,” he wrote.
Jason Fagon (he/him) is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: jason.fagone@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfagone
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