The state of Washington has logged two confirmed cases of BA.2, a new subvariant of COVID-19.
"A subvariant, basically, just means it’s a virus that has a different sequence. One of the things that we do know, is it looks as if it’s related to omicron variant," said Dr. Ken Stedman, professor of biology at Portland State University.
It is nicknamed the "stealth variant" because health officials say it is hard to detect.
Experts say it doesn't matter how many variants we have.
The best thing we can do is stop the spread of the virus. If we do that, we won't have to worry about variants at all.
We have been introduced to several new variants of COVID-19 ever since the pandemic started. And although omicron is a lot more contagious, other ones are still around.
"Delta is still around. I think a lot of what people are seeing, and that’s actually kind of surprising, is it does seem that omicron has out-competed delta, but there does still seem to be some delta cases around," said Stedman. "Omicron seems to be just as bad as delta. The big difference with omicron, is it seems to be able to infect people who’ve already been vaccinated and already been infected before."
Health officials explained why this new variant, BA.2, is hard to detect.
"It has modern mutation on the S gene. So some of the PCR tests that zone in on the S gene aren't able to get in as good as they were at detecting omicron," said Dr. Ali Mokdad, with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
And the big question is "nobody knows the answer to it. Are any of these variants going to be worse? Are they going to be getting over the immune defenses better? We really don’t know," Stedman said.
And that's exactly what Oregon Health Authority and Clark County Health told KATU's Frances Lin on Monday.
They both said they have too little information on BA.2 at this time.
But no matter what this variant entails, as a virus spreads, more and more variants will develop.
"And so what we need to do is to lower the amount of replication of the virus anywhere," Stedman said. "That means, get everybody vaccinated, not just in the U.S., but the whole world. So, if we can lower the amount of virus, fewer variants, fewer things to worry about."
KATU will be following up with our local health authorities as more information about this new subvariant comes in.
