New COVID strain could push cities back to mask mandates

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Tuesday that Omicron’s subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 are expected to make up a combined 70.1 percent of the COVID variants in the country as of July 2, Reuters reported. Both of the sublineages made up 52 percent of the variants in the U.S. during the week of June 25.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School said in June that new data suggests that the Omicron variants BA.5 and BA.5 seem to be more vaccine-evasive than previous subvariants among the fully vaccinated and boosted and those who were previously infected. However, the COVID-19 vaccine is still deemed as an effective way to protect against the virus.

“Now, BA.4 and BA.5 are displacing previous Omicron subvariants and are causing most of the infections in the US. Many places are seeing an increase in infections from a high baseline of cases,” Dr. Leana Wen, a professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, told CNN on Friday.