NEW YORK STATE -New York is closely monitoring the latest COVID variant that started in Europe and is now making its way into our state.
Governor Hochul held a COVID-19 news conference today at the Wadsworth Center testing lab in Albany.
Hochul says that while the state is not seeing a spike in hospitalization rates, there’s been a small uptick in COVID cases.
According to State Health Commissioner Mary Bassett, the new BA.2 variant makes up 42 percent of cases.
Although it has been rising, the state has not seen the rate of growth other countries such as the United Kingdom are seeing.
“BA.2 is more transmissible as you know than the original variant, but it does not appear to cause more severe illness, and it doesn’t appear to have any more ability to evade vaccination immunity,” says Bassett.
Wastewater surveillance is also being expanded to all counties in the state, to catch early warning signs of an increase in spread.