There have been at least three cases of BA.2 detected through sequencing in Houston. It's a descendant of Omicron, or BA.1, which has encircled the globe and has been the primary variant since last months.
Dr. Wesley Long is the medical director of microbiology of Houston Methodist Hospital. He says BA.2 arose around the same time and same general parts of the world as the omicron we know. He doesn't know whether it will prolong the pandemic. "We still see an occasional case of Delta and during the Delta wave, we had other variants that showed up here and there. So whether it remains sort of an occasional visitor we find a few cases of or whether it starts to take off, unfortunately only time will tell."
Cases of the new variant are surging in Denmark and in India, compared to the original omicron. Long calls that a "tad concerning." He doesn't know if there's something about Denmark and India that's different or if we will see more cases here.
Long says BA.2 does not seem to produce worse disease than omicron. Which begs the question, why is it here. Long says "It could be that it's slightly more contagious. Omicron is already the most infectious variant to date. It could be that there's some additional element of immune evasion or some other advantage. Random chance is always a possibility. It is an area of active investigation."
BA.2 is also called "Stealth Omicron." That's because it is missing one mutation from the common Omicron. That one mutation is what one PCR test uses it to distinguish the variant from Delta. It cannot evade testing.
Long says your best protection is vaccination, which is better than having been previously infected. "We see variants arise in areas where transmission is high, which tend to be areas where vaccination is low. We have to continue to monitor for new variants. Eventually we will get to a point where hopefully this becomes the fifth common human corona virus that just causes the common cold and most of us have some pre-existing immunity, and it doesn't cause severe disease."
He says we won't get to that point until we increase vaccination rates around the world.
"Every time we get a variant that's more contagious that really raises the bar for the percentage of vaccination you have to have in the population to really bring it under control."
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