New Covid Variant BA.4.6 Outcompeting Dominant BA.5 Across Swath Of U.S. For First Time
deadline.comThe Centers for Disease Control’s weekly variant proportions data update today offered the clearest indication yet that a new Omicron strain dubbed BA.4.6 may be able to outcompete now-dominant BA.5 in the United States.While BA.4.6 has been in the U.S.
since at least May, it remained below 2% of new cases sequenced until July, when it gradually began to rise, even as BA.5 continued to do the same.
As of this week’s CDC reporting, it currently stands at 7.5%. But the real wrinkle comes when the variant proportions are broken out regionally.In the area defined primarily by California, Arizona and Nevada, BA.4.6 lags behind even BA.4, with shares of 2.8% and 3.3%, respectively.
BA.5 in the region stands at 93% and rising. Compare that to the CDC-grouped region of Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri, where BA.4.6 has risen to 17.2% of all new cases sequenced, and BA.5 actually fell for the first time this past week to 78.5%.
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