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Highly Contagious BA.5 Variant Becomes Dominant In U.S. As Covid Cases Rise
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The highly transmissible BA.5 omicron subvariant is now the dominant coronavirus strain in the U.S., accounting for nearly 54% of Covid-19 infections last week, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as cases rise and drug companies work to reformulate vaccines to target new virus strains known for their ability to evade antibodies.
A.5 and the closely related omicron substrain BA.4 comprised 70% of coronavirus infections for the week ending July 2, according to CDC estimates, which may be subject to changes.
The BA.2.12.1 variant, which helped fuel a spike in Covid-19 cases when it was dominant in the spring, accounted for only 27% of cases last week.
The news comes a week after the Food and Drug Administration recommended that pharmaceutical companies update their coronavirus vaccine booster shots by the fall to target BA.4 and BA.5, in anticipation of a winter Covid-19 surge.
It also comes as Covid-19 cases have been on the rise in recent months, with the United States averaging 94,345 new infections per day in the week ending July 4, more than triple the 30,558 daily cases reported as of April 10, but well below the January peak of more than 800,000 per day.
Hospitalizations have trended upwards, too: Covid-19 hospital admissions averaged 4,376 per day in the seven-day period ending July 3, more than twice the average of 1,428 per day in early April, though numbers are still much lower than during the winter coronavirus surge, when daily hospitalizations topped 20,000.
Over 16% of U.S. coronavirus tests came back positive on average last week, the highest positivity rate since early February, according to the CDC.
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