With newer COVID variants and subvariants behind many positive cases in Chicago and other parts of the country, many are wondering whether symptoms are changing with the new variants as many people begin to experience them.
Currently, the highly infectious BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants are responsible for most reported cases this summer.
Those subtypes cause more upper respiratory, cold and flu-like symptoms, including fever, night sweats and sore throat, according to Chicago’s top physician. Some patients, although not all, experience loss of taste and smell again.
But Chicago Department of Public Health commissioner Dr Alison Arvadi said that although the variants may be new, symptoms remain the same as in previous cases, with one notable change.
“Nothing really different, I would say, but just more symptoms. It’s a more virulent infection,” Arvadi said during a Facebook Live on Tuesday.
Arvadi has earlier said that a protracted cough is common among people recently infected with the COVID forms.
Some doctors and researchers believe that because these new variants spread so rapidly, they affect mucosal immunity more as opposed to longer-lasting immunity, Arvadi said.
The latest variants sit in the nasal passages and cause infection, she said, instead of settling in the lungs. According to Arvadi, that change could lead to a nasal COVID vaccine in the future.
The UK, where BA.4 and BA.5 infections also account for the majority of recent COVID cases, reported runny nose, sore throat, headache, persistent cough and fatigue as its most common symptoms last week.
Less than a third of those surveyed reported a fever, according to data from the Zo COVID Symptom Study, which allows people to self-report symptoms via a smartphone app. The symptoms are consistent with those reported in the spring, when the BA.2 subvariant was dominant in the country.
According to the University of California Davis Health, the reported symptoms of BA.5 are similar to those of previous COVID forms: fever, runny nose, cough, sore throat, headache, muscle aches and fatigue. At this point, there does not appear to be any difference in symptoms observed in BA.4 or BA.5 cases compared to earlier Omicron strains.
Here’s what else we know so far.
What should you know about BA.5?
According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of July 2, subvariant BA.5 was responsible for about 54% of COVID cases in the US BA.4, with a similar subvariant, about 17% higher. ,
David Montefiori, a professor at the Human Vaccine Institute at Duke University Medical Center, told NBC News that the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron variants are nearly three times less sensitive to neutralizing antibodies from existing COVID vaccines than the original version of BA. Huh. .1. Additional research shows that BA.4 and BA.5 are four times more resistant to antibodies from vaccines than BA.2. In April that subvariant replaced Omicron as America’s dominant variant of the coronavirus.
The BA.4 and BA.5 mutations are expected to be dominant across the continent, “likely to replace all other variants by the end of July,” Marco Cavallari of the European Medicines Agency told an online briefing.
He said that although there is no evidence that the variants make people more sick than earlier strains of the virus, “the increase in transmission in older age groups is beginning to translate into severe disease.”
If you’ve had COVID before, how safe are you with BA.5?
François Balloux, director of the University College London Genetics Institute, said that while BA.1 and BA.2 are “quite different … BA.2, BA.4 and B.5 are essentially interchangeable from a neutralizing antibody standpoint.”
Because of that, people who had a BA.2 infection may have some protection from the latest subtypes, he said. While they spread faster than any other, BA.4 and BA.5 have not been found to cause more severe disease, according to doctors.
“There’s really no clear evidence that they are any less likely to make people sick and cause serious illness and death,” Montefiori said.
Dr. Nathan Grubaugh, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, said people need to understand that variants such as omicron and ba.5 are a natural part of virus progression.
According to an article on the school’s website, he said, “Delta was never the final version—and O’Micron will not be the final version.” “As long as there is a COVID-19 outbreak somewhere in the world, something new is going to emerge that emerges.”
What steps can you take to protect yourself?
Grubaugh and other doctors say the best way to prevent new forms is to get vaccinated and booster shots. If more people are fully vaccinated, the chance for the virus to spread and mutate is reduced, he says.
The European Union said on Monday it is “important” that officials in the 27-nation bloc consider giving a second coronavirus booster shot to people aged 60 to 79 and other vulnerable people, as a new outbreak of the pandemic hit the continent. wave is.
Stella Kyriakides, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said in a statement: “With cases and hospitalizations rising as we enter the summer period, I urge everyone to vaccinate and promote as soon as possible. there’s no time.”
ECDC director Andrea Ammon said the new wave is being driven by the highly transmissible BA.5 mutation of the Omicron version of the coronavirus.
“This signals the start of a new, widespread COVID-19 wave in the EU,” she said. “There are still many individuals at risk of serious COVID-19 infection, which we need to protect against as soon as possible. We need to remind people the importance of getting vaccinated from the first shot to the second booster. Let us start today That has to be the beginning.”
Meanwhile, New York City public health officials on Friday urged residents to wear indoor masks, given how they are seeing high levels of COVID-19 infections.
To help slow the spread, the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recommended in a tweet that “all New Yorkers should wear a high-quality mask, such as N95, in all public indoor settings and around crowds outside.” KN95 or KF94.”
What else should you know?
The spread of BA.5 comes even as scientists worry about a new Omicron mutant – called BA2.75 – growing in India and popping up in other countries.
Scientists say the new variant can spread rapidly and gain immunity from vaccines and previous infections. It is not clear whether it can cause more severe disease than other Omicron variants, including BA.5.
“It’s still too early for us to draw too many conclusions,” said Matthew Binnicker, MD, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “But it seems, especially in India, the rates of transmission are showing that kind of exponential growth.” Whether it will surpass BA.5, he said, is yet to be determined.
Still, the fact that it has been detected in many parts of the world, even with low levels of viral surveillance, said Shishi Luo, head of infectious diseases for Helix, a company that supplies viral sequencing, “is an early sign.” that it is spreading.” Information to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lipi Thukral, a scientist at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi, said the latest mutants have been spotted in many distant states in India, and are spreading there faster than other variants. It has also been found in about 10 other countries, including Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada. Two cases were recently identified on the west coast of the US, and Helix last week identified a third US case.
What worries fueling experts is the large number of mutations that set this new version apart from its Omicron predecessors. Some of those mutations are in regions that are related to the spike protein and could allow the virus to bind more efficiently to cells, Binnicker said.
Another concern is that genetic variations may make it easier for the virus to skirt past antibodies – protective proteins made by the body in response to infection from a vaccine or an earlier version.