A new more contagious stealth omicron variant BA.2 that’s already circulating in the U.S. could “slow down” the rapid drop in COVID-19 cases, a former FDA commissioner said on Sunday.
But ex-FDA chief Scott Gottlieb emphasized that people who have been infected by the original omicron variant should be protected from BA.2, and that the previous omicron surge will help limit this new variant.
“If you had omicron infection, you should have protection against subsequent infection from this new variant,” Gottlieb said on CBS’ Face The Nation. “That’s why I don’t think this is going to create a huge wave of infection.
“What’s likely to happen is as we were coming down, and coming down quite sharply in parts of the Northeast, Florida, the mid-Atlantic, you might see as this new strain starts to pick up, you might see that we start to slow down in that decline, but the decline will happen nonetheless,” he said.
“Right now, it represents probably about 5% of infections in the U.S., and we have so much omicron immunity that’s probably going to be a backstop against this really taking off.”
The new stealth omicron coronavirus variant appears to be more contagious. Data out of Denmark suggests that it’s about 1.5 times more contagious than the original strain of omicron, Gottlieb said.
But the variant appears to be less dangerous and severe, based on data out of Denmark and the U.K., he said.
“There’s data out of the U.K. that suggests that a fully boosted person may be more protected against this new variant than they were against the original strain of omicron,” Gottlieb added.
Meanwhile, the Boston-area coronavirus wastewater data continues to take a dive. The latest update on the tracker over the weekend showed that both the south of Boston and north of Boston wastewater levels have dropped back to what the levels were in mid-December.
The south of Boston seven-day average is now 1,328 copies per milliliter, which is about an 88% plummet from the omicron peak in early January.
The north of Boston seven-day average is now 1,144 copies per milliliter, which is an 87% plunge from the peak on the northern side.
These are test results from the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s pilot study to track wastewater for indicators of COVID-19 infection, and the sewage data is the earliest sign of community case trends.
After the wastewater data started to decline, the confirmed case counts started dropping across Massachusetts. Infection tallies are expected to continue to go down in the Bay State as omicron slows.
