CDC monitoring new BA.2 variant but encouraged by COVID numbers

By Katie Lannan

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, MARCH 23, 2022…..As health officials closely monitor the newest sub-variant of COVID-19, they have also seen overall case counts “decrease dramatically” in recent weeks, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky called it “really encouraging” that national COVID-19 numbers are now hovering near their past lows after a surge this winter driven by the omicron variant of the virus.

During a White House COVID-19 task force briefing, Walensky said the national seven-day case average is down about 9 percent since last week, to 28,657. While case counts continue to fall in some areas, the CDC has also observed “small increases” in others, she said.

In Massachusetts, the Department of Public Health reported 1,074 new confirmed cases of the virus and one new death Wednesday, with 231 people hospitalized for COVID-19 across the state.

The Bay State’s seven-day average of new, confirmed COVID-19 cases stands at 581, down from about 816 at the start of the month and a high of more than 23,000 in early January. With many people now taking at-home rapid tests rather than the molecular tests used to calculate the DPH’s number of confirmed cases, the numbers likely do not fully capture the COVID-19 case counts in Massachusetts.

The state’s seven-day average of hospitalizations, now at about 224, and positive test rate, now 1.91 percent, have also fallen sharply from their January peaks.

Walensky said the CDC is tracking the BA.2 sublineage of COVID-19, an offshoot of the omicron variant that she said has been slowly increasing in proportion and now represents about 35 percent of circulating variants nationally.

“As we’re learning from our colleagues in Europe, Asia and South Africa, where BA.2 has resulted in varied peaks of cases, there’s no evidence that BA.2 variant results in more severe disease, nor does it appear to be more likely to evade our immune protection,” Walensky said. “However, it does have increased transmission in comparison to the related BA.1 omicron variant that circulated in the U.S. this past winter.”

There has been a small increase in reported cases in New York state and New York City over the past week, Walensky said. She said there have also been some increases in numbers of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the Northeast, and that the CDC is “closely watching” those upticks and has not yet seen an indication of increased severe disease or hospital strain.

Walensky and other federal officials at the briefing urged Congress to provide additional COVID response funding to ensure the country will have the tools it needs — including vaccines, booster shots, therapeutics and testing supplies — to confront any future surges.