STANFORD, Calif. (KRON)– The California Department of Public Health has confirmed 11 cases of the new omicron subvariant in California — at least two of those cases are in Santa Clara County.
A Stanford infectious disease specialist explains what we know about the subvariant, so far.
The doctor says we don’t need to be too worried about this subvariant, just yet.
Doctors have always expected to see mutations of COVID-19 — just like the flu virus evolves every year.
“I think what’s known is that viruses will mutate,” I think we were pretty clear on that from the beginning.”
Doctors are monitoring a subvariant of omicron BA.2.
“We know that there are at least two omicron variants.”
Doctor yvonne maldonaldo–professor of global health and infectious diseases at stanford university– says there is also a b-a 3 but, so far, it’s not as worrisome as b-a 2.
A Denmark study says BA.2 cases grew 90 to 120 percent faster than BA.1, which is the original omicron variation.
“At this point, we haven’t seen anything surprising yet. It is still called a variant of interest by the World Health Organization.”
She says the data out of Denmark isn’t showing any major differences between BA.2 and its parent variant.
Although some scientists are worried it could be more contagious, it has been identified in countries across the world.
She says, from what they know so far, masking and the current vaccines still work against the variant.
“So far we know that vaccines are still protecting against even this current variant. We know that a booster makes the protection even better.”
Some experts do say there is a possibility that this subvariant of omicron could re-infect people who only recently had omicron.