The first case of COVID-19 involving the omicron subvariant in Illinois was detected this weekend by Northwestern Medicine.
, which some people have referred to as “stealth omicron,” carries additional mutations that are thought to make it more transmissible than the current omicron, according to Northwestern. Early data show vaccines and booster shots are similarly effective in preventing symptomatic cases of BA.1, which is the most widely spread omicron subvariant, and BA.2.The subvariant’s arrival in Illinois is no surprise, say Northwestern scientists.
“If BA.2 follows the same pattern in the U.S. as observed in countries like the United Kingdom, Denmark or India, we could observe a slowing of the current decline in new cases,” said Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo, the bioinformatics director at Northwestern Medicine’s Center for Pathogen Genomics and Microbial Evolution, in a news release. “In this case, the number of new cases could stabilize for a while before starting to decrease again.
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