TAMPA, Fla. — “By no stretch of our imagination are we out of the woods yet,” said Dr. Jason Salemi, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of South Florida.
For a few months now, health officials have seen a decline in COVID-19 cases, but those are now starting to go back up.
“What we’re generally seeing is that the virus is out there and, you know, before, it was trying to find a way to transmit better in humans, and then we got to omicron. Now omicron is basically the dominant force, and now omicron is trying to figure out a way around our immune system,” said Dr. Michael Teng, Virologist and Associate Professor for USF Health.
According to the latest numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, new omicron subvariants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 now make up 57.3% of new COVID-19 cases in the United States, overtaking BA.5 as the dominant mutations.
“The thing that can be a game changer like it’s always been is these variants. We’ve got additional variants to be concerned about,” said Salemi.
BA.5 has been the dominant strain since July but now only makes up 19.4%of cases. Researchers believe that number is dropping fast as the BQ subvariants grow quickly.
“A lot of these different alphabet soup variants, they’re coming to the same sort of solution to try to avoid our immune responses,” said Teng.
Health officials stress our best protection against these new strains continues to be the updated COVID-19 bivalent booster.
“That one does help to cover and protect you from the newer variants that are going to be spreading over this holiday season,” said Dr. Laura Arline, Chief Quality Officer for BayCare.
“The bivalent boosters seem to protect better against BA.5, which is kind of like the grandparent of BQ.1. So, it should be helpful in preventing hospitalizations and death,” said Teng.
Doctors are worried because, so far, only 12.7% of people who are eligible got the new shot.
It’s a concern for health officials as they watch for the spread this time of year.
“I’m just concerned that if people just don’t come out and get the booster and start to relax everything, we know there’s not a lot of mitigation going on, not a lot of mask-wearing. When you start to couple those things with a new variant, you just start to get in a pretty precarious place again,” said Salemi.
Health officials are hopeful we won’t see as big of a wave this winter as we’ve seen in the past.