In many North Carolina towns and cities, mask mandates are ending, and vaccination requirements are loosening, but questions remain about the next COVID-19 subvariant, omicron BA.2.
The subvariant makes up roughly 8% of cases nationwide, according to data from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the week ending Feb. 26.
“Just the fact that there is a new variant circulating doesn’t necessarily mean anything in terms of people’s risk or in terms of our trajectory with the pandemic,” said Dr. Zack Moore, North Carolina’s state epidemiologist.
Instead, scientists look at whether a subvariant is more transmissible, causes more severe disease and evades vaccines, as well as how it responds to different treatment options, Moore said.
Variants are simply viruses that share the same mutations, indicating that they come from the same place at the same time, Moore explained.
The original omicron variant was more transmissible than prior variants such as alpha and delta. The earlier variant of omicron caused a huge rise in cases in early 2022.
“Early evidence suggests that the omicron variant is two to three times as contagious as the delta variant, making it four to six times as contagious as the original COVID-19 virus,” according to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
As the earlier omicron variant took hold in the United States, cases spiked dramatically. North Carolina started the year with roughly 8,000 daily cases. Less than two weeks later, the daily case rate exceeded 45,000.
Case numbers declined as dramatically as they grew, with fewer than 1,000 daily cases reported on the last day of February. Researchers are closely monitoring the new variant and its potential for another spike.
In the Southern region, which includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee, the latest CDC data…