Vaccinated people can become infected, but remain at low risk of severe disease. “The people who are doing poorly are those who have other medical conditions and are still unvaccinated,” he said. Hospitalizations have crept upward since the advent of BA.5, but they are nowhere near their peak during the winter surge with the original omicron.Īt the Einstein facility in Philadelphia, for example, a dozen patients have COVID, down from a high of 200 in January, Sachinwalla said.Īnd generally, hospitalized patients are now much less likely to need a ventilator, he said. BA.5 may simply have come along at the right time to make more people sick. It’s been months since most people have had a dose of a vaccine, and their immunity has waned. on coronaviruses at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. Yes, BA.5 is spreading rapidly, but that in itself does not mean the subvariant is more transmissible than those that came before it, he said.Īll we know for sure is that it has a “growth advantage” – some combination of mutations that, for now, allows it to outcompete earlier versions of the virus.īA.5 may also be on the rise due to some combination of opportune timing and the behavior of the humans it infects, said Goldstein, who did his Ph.D. It’s not quite that simple, said Stephen Goldstein, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Utah. If you add up all those increases in transmissibility, it might seem COVID spreads as easily as measles – one of the most contagious viruses known to science. With each new rapidly spreading variant, we hear estimates about how much more transmissible it is. Still unclear, Sachinwalla said, is whether BA.5 is as likely to result in long COVID – the brain fog, exhaustion, and other symptoms that linger for months. One encouraging difference from earlier waves of COVID: Those who get infected these days may be less likely to lose their sense of smell. If you have those symptoms, get tested and stay clear of others, just as physicians have been recommending from the start. That means cough, fever, achy joints, and headaches. So far, the symptoms of infection with BA.5 seem to be much the same as COVID all along, said Eric Sachinwalla, medical director for infection prevention at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia.
#Covid vaccine near me how to#
In the meantime, here’s the latest on BA.5, and how to reduce risk by taking reasonable precautions.
In one recent study, University of Pittsburgh researchers and others discovered clues as to how that might be achieved by focusing on internal proteins that all such viruses have in common. Scientists predict someday, they will develop a “pan-coronavirus” vaccine – one that would protect people against all variants of the coronavirus, along with other related viruses. The original vaccines remain remarkably effective at preventing serious disease and death – even from BA.5. And while this latest version of the virus has mutated substantially since the beginning of the pandemic, it’s still the coronavirus. The good news is BA.5 is not some sort of super-virus, contrary to what it might sound like in the more alarmist corners of social media. Last month, an FDA advisory committee reviewed data for updated vaccines, but even those newer versions are based on the original omicron variant – not the BA.5 version now on the rise.Īs the pandemic drags on, it’s fair to wonder if we’re ever going to catch up. But those vaccines are unchanged since their rollout more than a year and half ago. The Biden administration responded Tuesday by once again urging people to get booster shots. PHILADELPHIA – The BA.5 “subvariant” of the coronavirus has rapidly become dominant in the United States, and rising COVID-19 case numbers are dashing hopes for a summer break from the pandemic.
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