much of the world is opening up, but the covid-19 pandemic is definitely not over.
the current strain of the virus doctors are concerned about is ba.2, a subvariant of omicron, which the who has declared
a variant of concern
. it’s even more contagious than the highly-transmissible ba.1, the initial omicron strain: it transmits at 1.4 times the rate and it also replicates more easily in nasal cells.
ba.2 has overtaken ba.1 in south africa, denmark and germany, and it’s also starting to spread widely elsewhere in europe, too. it isn’t yet the most dominant strain in canada but it’s on its way there,
the ottawa citizen reported
on wednesday. as of this week, almost half of all new covid cases in the country are ba.2 cases.
“we are moving from a ba.1 wave to a ba.2 wave,” university of british columbia evolutionary virology professor sarah otto told the paper.
because so much of the canadian population (
nearly 85 per cent
) is vaccinated, we’re in better shape to deal with ba.2 than many other countries, she said. but immunocompromised people are at risk of hospitalization from the subvariant, as well as people who received their booster more than three months ago.
“that is what i am concerned about,” otto said.
while we know ba.2 is more contagious than ba.1, it isn’t necessarily more dangerous. experts are split on just how worried we should be about the subvariant.
a japanese study
found that ba.2 is both different enough and worrying enough from the original omicron strain that it should be given its own name, since “the risk of ba.2 for global health is potentially higher than that of ba.1.” but
a british study
came to a different conclusion, arguing that it doesn’t appear to cause more serious illnesses than ba.1.