COVID-19 surge from BA.2 not certain in US, experts say
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CDC data show that the omicron BA.2 subvariant of SARS-CoV-2 accounted for approximately 35% of COVID-19 cases in the United States during the week ending March 19, up from around 22% the week before.
Data also show a decrease in the 7-day moving average of new cases during the same period.
The BA.2 subvariant has been the cause of COVID-19 surges in Europe and Asia, raising questions about what will happen in the U.S.
In an interview on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief presidential medical advisor, said the U.S. “likely will see an uptick in cases as we’ve seen in the European countries” — particularly in the United Kingdom, where restrictions have been relaxed and immunity is waning — but another surge in cases is not as likely.
“Hopefully, we won't see a surge. I don't think we will,” Fauci said. “The easiest way to prevent that is to continue to get people vaccinated. And for those who have been vaccinated, to continue to get them boosted.”
According to Paul Biddinger, MD, chief of the division of emergency preparedness at Mass General Brigham in Boston, although it is likely there will be an increase in cases, it is less clear what will happen in terms of hospitalizations or cases of severe illness.
“BA.2 is the latest version of a variant that we have concerns about. It is remarkable in terms of how transmissible it is, but thankfully, not so far in terms of how much severe illness it causes,” Biddinger told Healio. “Even though I don't think it is likely to create a large spike in hospitalizations, it is almost assuredly not the last variant that we are going to see, and we cannot take our eye off the ball in terms of continuing to invest in testing and treatment infrastructure in the public health and health care infrastructure because we just don't know when that next variant may come.”
Should the U.S. see a surge from BA.2 or another variant, Biddinger said the public health infrastructure may be able to handle it if there is not a related spike in hospitalizations. Understanding the difference is important.
“If we’re not seeing rises in the numbers of hospitalizations or numbers of people with severe illness, I think that’s how we will learn to live with COVID-19 in the background as an endemic disease,” Biddinger said. “It’s less about the total number of cases and much more about how well protected the population is from severe illness.”
Looking ahead, Biddinger said people should continue to consider their own situation in terms of vaccination, boosters and underlying health issues, to determine when and how they will mask and how they will interact indoors. Public health must also take steps to be better prepared, he said
“There is still an awful lot of work to do in the health care system and in the public health system to make us ready for future surges,” Biddinger said.
He said the system still struggles with effectively managing capacity during surges, balancing the needs of overall medical care with the needs of surge medical care, and efficiently using medical resources to respond. These are especially important now, he said, because of how uncertain many details of COVID-19 have been from the start.
“We are all hesitant about making predictions because COVID proves us wrong constantly, but I would say that I'm not expecting that there will be a dramatic surge in hospitalizations or severe illness from BA.2 in the short term,” he said. “My hope is that we have high rates of immunization and high rates of boosters [that] will be protective.”
References:
CDC. COVID data tracker. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions. Accessed on March 22, 2022.
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