the province’s four other health authorities showed similar peaks and valleys, with vancouver island at 5.6 cases per 100,000 on june 30, vancouver coastal at 5.2, the interior at 3.0 and northern b.c. at 2.3 cases. by july 7, those numbers rose, most dramatically in northern health, almost triple, to 5.9 per 100,000, to 6.2 for the island, 6.5 for vancouver coastal, and 4.3 for the interior.
ubc professor sarah otto, a member of the independent covid-19 modelling group in b.c., says b.c. need more, faster booster shots, a return to some mask mandates, and better data
vancouver sun
the ba.5 omicron subvariant is overtaking omicron ba.1 and ba.2 as the dominant strain infecting people in b.c., said ubc professor sarah otto, a member of the independent covid-19 modelling group in b.c.
a computerized model projected the omicron subvariant ba.5 to be responsible for 70 per cent of covid cases and rising, while ba.4 was projected to be 20 per cent and dropping, she said.
ba.5 is spreading faster than the ba.4, and “we can go ahead and call this a ba.5 wave,” she said. “we can definitely say it spreads faster (than earlier variants).”
ba.5 is more efficient and can get into our cells better, so you need to be exposed to less of the virus to get infected, said otto. plus the ba.5 is better at masking itself as a virus, hiding from our natural and vaccine-produced antibodies whose job is it to attack and neutralize them.