The city is also officially ending its weekly COVID-19 travel advisory updates.
A new version of the coronavirus’s highly contagious omicron variant — commonly known as “stealth omicron” — is on track to dominate Chicago COVID-19 cases by the end of March, public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said Tuesday, while assuring its impact would be muted compared with previous surges.
“I don’t have as much concern because we got through BA.1 and kind of came all the way back down,” Arwady said. “But … you have to be humble when you’re talking about this, and that’s where I think we’re watching for that, when gets to be the predominant one.” BA.2 is also widely known as “stealth omicron” because it is harder to immediately discern whether a person infected by it has that specific coronavirus lineage or the delta variant, another highly infectious version of the coronavirus that hit the U.S. mid-2021. But current COVID-19 tests can still detect that a person with BA.2 is positive for the virus.
She also signaled optimism that Chicago will be better prepared than countries grappling with BA.2 right now because of a high share of residents with prior omicron infection and currently low coronavirus numbers. The latter means the city can better “tolerate” new variants because the risk is lower.
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