Omicron BA.2 Variant May Be Extra Transmissible 'Only having a transmissibility advantage at this stage of the game isn't a total showstopper' Kristina Fiore medpagetoday

The Omicron sublineage BA.2 is making headlines for its potentially increased transmissibility as its prevalence rises in some countries, but experts aren't too concerned about the variant just yet.

COVID-19 can wreak havoc on your body. So will it cause health issues decades down the road? | CBC News COVID-19 can lead to a dizzying array of symptoms and sometimes causes lingering effects. What will that mean for the long-term health of millions of people who’ve been infected — months, years or even decades down the road? CBC

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Why rapid COVID tests aren't more accurate and how scientists hope to improve them

How much should you trust the results of a rapid antigen test? That's a question many people are asking these days amid recent research and anecdotes suggesting these tests may be less sensitive to omicron. Researchers are working fast to figure out what's going on and how to improve the tests.

That includes people like Dr. Wilbur Lam, a professor of pediatrics and biomedical engineering at Emory University and one of the lead investigators assessing COVID-19 diagnostic tests for the federal government. His research team began evaluating rapid antigen tests against live samples of the omicron variant last December in the lab, and in early assessments, he says, some tests failed to detect the coronavirus "at a concentration that we would have expected them to catch it if it were another variant."

That finding prompted the Food and Drug Administration to update its online guidance in late December to note that, while rapid antigen tests do detect the omicron variant, "they may have reduced sensitivity."