Cooper Neill/Reuters
There are already dozens of cases across almost half of the U.S. of a new Covid subvariant that’s even more contagious than the already highly transmissible omicron variant.
Nearly half of U.S. states have confirmed the presence of BA.2 with at least 127 known cases nationwide as of Friday, according to a global data base that tracks Covid variants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a statement Friday, said although BA.2 has increased in proportion to the original omicron strain in some countries, it is currently circulating at a low level in the U.S….
The subvariant is 1.5 times more transmissible than the original omicron strain, referred to by scientists as BA.1, according to Statens Serum Institut, which conducts infectious disease surveillance for Denmark.
Here’s the important bit:
The new sublineage doesn’t appear to further reduce the effectiveness of vaccines against symptomatic infection, according to the U.K. Health Security Agency…
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, warned on Tuesday that the next Covid will variant be more transmissible.
“The next variant of concern will be more fit, and what we mean by that is it will be more transmissible because it will have to overtake what is currently circulating,” Van Kerkhove said. “The big question is whether or not future variants will be more or less severe.”
Please don’t work at convincing yourself this pandemic is over…or nearly over. Just saying…
Eideard 
Welp, pandemic is over in Denmark.
https://www.newsweek.com/denmark-end-most-covid-restrictions-welcome-life-we-knew-before-1673373
I suppose it could be extended indefinitely in the US for those with a mask or Stalinist fetish. Maybe its time for another lab leak to keep the utopian vision of cultural revolution alive.
Those pesky scientists say they’ve identified a new hybrid version of the coronavirus called “deltacron” — which combines the delta and the omicron variants of the virus.’
Apparently there’s no major concern for deltacron yet due to the limited amount of cases. https://www.deseret.com/coronavirus/2022/3/20/22984738/new-deltacron-covid-19-symptoms-to-watch
Los Angeles BA.2 Covid Cases Jump 130% In One Week As More Transmissible Omicron Variant Spreads Across U.S. https://deadline.com/2022/03/ba-2-omicron-cases-los-angeles-1234986553/
Omicron BA.2 Variant Now More Than Half Of All New Covid Cases Across Large Swath In U.S., Per CDC https://deadline.com/2022/03/omicron-ba-2-half-new-covid-cases-northeast-u-s-1234984127/
Rates of vaccination for the coronavirus have plummeted to their lowest levels since the shots were rolled out in December 2020, even as some infectious-disease experts fear another case surge. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/599741-us-covid-19-vaccinations-per-day-fall-to-lowest-level-since-2020
After falling rapidly beginning in January, infections in the United States have recently plateaued at about 30,000 per day. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
The pandemic was a significant factor in the dramatic slowing of U.S. population growth last year, according to new Census Bureau data. Nearly 75 percent of U.S. counties reported more deaths than births in 2021, fueling the smallest population increase in a century.
‘That’s unheard of in American history,’ said demographer Kenneth Johnson of the Census Bureau findings. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nearly-75-25-of-us-counties-lost-population-last-year-as-deaths-outnumbered-births-data-shows/ar-AAVqsQI
Population growth, 7AM MDT, tomorrow morning, 26th