Report: US COVID cases may rise due to Omicron sub-variant

Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to US President Joe Biden and top infectious disease expert, says COVID cases in the United States will rise in the next few weeks due to the Omicron BA.2 sub-variant.

According to ABC news, Fauci said this on Wednesday in an interview with KGTV, its affiliate.

The US has recorded over 75 million cases — including over 900,000 deaths — resulting from COVID.

The BA.2 sub-variant is one of the lineages of the Omicron variant and has been detected in over 50 countries.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows BA.2 has been increasing in prevalence in the US.

Fauci said given the growing prevalence of BA.2, he expects cases will increase within the next month and that the sub-variant will become the dominant variant in the country, surpassing the original Omicron variant.

“I would expect that we might see an uptick in cases here in the United States because, only a week or so ago, the CDC came out with their modification of the metrics for what would be recommended for masking indoors, and much of the country right now is in that zone, where masking indoors is not required,” he said.

“It has a transmission advantage over BA.1. Namely, it is more likely to transmit, which is the reason why we’re seeing the uptick in cases in the UK and in the European countries, that have pulled back a bit on their mitigation.”

Fauci said he is, however, encouraged that BA.2 does not appear to cause more severe symptoms, but warned that if the US experiences another COVID wave, Americans must be willing to re-adopt mitigation measures.

“We have to be careful that if we do see a surge as a result of that, that we’re flexible enough to reinstitute the kinds of interventions that could be necessary to stop an additional surge,” he said.

“I hope that doesn’t happen. But we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Meanwhile, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said although the BA.2 sub-variant could be more infectious, “there has been no evidence that flags it as more harmful”.

On its part, the Africa Centre for Disease Control (CDC) has affirmed that the sub-variant is more infectious than the original Omicron variant.