California Covid: Test Positivity Up Nearly 50% In One Week As New Omicron Variant BA.2.12.2 Begins To Show

deadline.com:

Covid test positivity in California is up 47.6% in the past week, according to the California State data dashboard. One week ago, the 7-day daily test positivity rate was 2.1%.

Today, it sits at 3.1%. That’s quite a jump for a metric that is averaged over seven days to account for daily fluctuations in data reporting and testing.The rise comes as a new version of Omicron, a subvariant of BA.2 called BA.2.12.2 is making inroads in the region and across the country.

The sublineage is thought to have a 23%–27% growth advantage over BA.2, according to the New York State Department of Public Health.Nationally, BA.2.12.2 now accounts for 19% of all new cases specifically sequenced for variants in the country, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S.

Centers for Disease Control. That means the strain — barely on the national radar two weeks ago — is now being identified in close to 1 in 5 newly-sequenced cases.California, however, does not break Omicron data out into sublineages, a practice that made it hard to track the rise of BA.2 and is now making it hard to chart BA.2.12.1, since all Omicron — which accounts for 99.2% of the state’s cases — is lumped in together.But reporting indicates that in the southwestern region made up of California, Nevada and Arizona, BA.2.12.2 is responsible for about 9% of new cases.