EMILY KWONG, HOST:
You're listening to SHORT WAVE from NPR.
Hey, SHORT WAVE-rs, Emily Kwong here. Our mainstay health correspondent, Allison Aubrey, is with me. What is up, Allison?
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Hi, Emily. It's good to be here.
KWONG: Hey. It is another day in the pandemic, which is still ongoing. When it comes to COVID transmission and new variants, I hear the big player these days is BA.5.
AUBREY: That's right. This is a subvariant of omicron, and it is now dominant in the U.S.
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MIGUEL ALMAGUER: ...BA.5 the most contagious version of the virus yet, now dominant, making up more than 50% of new cases. And while there is...
ALI VELSHI: Many experts say this new strain of the virus, BA.5, is changing the playing field under our feet as we try to find...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: The CDC reports the BA.5 subvariant is the most dominant in the U.S. now, with new cases and hospitalizations forcing some cities to reconsider mask mandates...
AUBREY: And Emily, with cases rising, Los Angeles is now considering whether to reinstate its mask mandate. And in New York, the health department is now recommending that people mask up in public places.
KWONG: To be honest, Allison, I never really put my mask away in the first place. I carry it 'cause in the city where I live, businesses can still require people to use masks indoors.
AUBREY: And that is certainly the norm in our workplace here at NPR headquarters in D.C.
KWONG: Yep.
AUBREY: And BA.5's quick rise corresponds with an increase not just in hospitalizations but also reinfections.
KWONG: Today on the show, a look at the most dominant omicron subvariant in the U.S. right now - what it can mean for reinfections, long COVID and whether you keep your mask on. I'm Emily Kwong.
AUBREY: And I'm Allison Aubrey.
KWONG: And you are listening to SHORT WAVE, the daily science podcast from NPR.
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KWONG: OK, Allison, tell us about BA.5. From what I've heard, it's causing another surge in COVID cases, but we're not exactly sure how many cases. Why is that?
AUBREY: Well, if you think about it, I mean, a lot of people are using the rapid, at-home tests. And so this just makes it hard to know how many people are infected.
KWONG: A lot of people, when they're taking a rapid test - they get their results, change what they're doing if they need to, but they're not necessarily reporting those results to their local health officials, right?
AUBREY: That's right. I mean, when I had COVID last month, I called my primary care doctor. I said, hey, I've got a positive result. And they basically said, you know, OK. I wanted it noted in my health record, but this is not something that my primary care doctors are tracking or reporting up. And so since many of us are not getting PCR tests to confirm a positive at-home test, it just makes it trickier to know the infection rate in any given place.
KWONG: Right - because it's those positive PCR tests, which are lab based, that are reported up to the CDC.
AUBREY: That's right.
KWONG: So are there other ways to tell if there is a surge?
AUBREY: Well, one indicator is hospitalization data. Right now, hospitalizations are rising. About 31,000 people are in the hospital with COVID around the country. New admissions are up about 5% over last week. And reinfections are also on the rise. According to some updated data from New York, for instance, reinfections began to rise again, beginning mid-to-late June. So some people who got COVID this winter are getting it again, which can be a real surprise to people who thought they had good immunity.
ROBERT WACHTER: Not only is it more infectious, but your prior immunity doesn't count for as much as it used to.
AUBREY: I spoke to Bob Wachter about this. He's a physician at UC San Francisco. He says, look. BA.5 is highly transmissible and it manages to kind of sidestep, at least partially, some of the immunity we have from prior infections and vaccinations.
WACHTER: And that means that the old saw that, I just had COVID a month ago, and so I have COVID immunity superpowers, and I'm not going to get it again - that no longer holds.
KWONG: Wow. I didn't realize this. This is a really important thing to know about BA.5. It makes me want to wear my mask more.
AUBREY: And speaking as someone who just had COVID last month, I'm paying attention to this...
KWONG: Yeah.
AUBREY: ...Because I, you know, was pretty miserable for several days. So I don't want to get it again.
KWONG: Absolutely. Allison, speaking of reinfections, if that happens to you, if you get COVID again, what can you expect this time around? What are doctors seeing with BA.5?
AUBREY: Well, there's no evidence that BA.5 would cause, you know, more serious illness...
KWONG: OK.
AUBREY: ...Even though it is very contagious. The bottom line is that the impact of a BA.5 surge or whatever subvariant might come next - it will not likely be on the scale of what we saw last winter. We will be able to manage it better. That is the consensus I hear when I talk to infectious disease experts, including Anna Durbin. She's a physician at Johns Hopkins University. She says, look. We're already seeing this. The combination of prior infections and vaccinations is protective, and the treatments are better. So even though there are a lot of people getting infected, there are fewer people dying. I mean, last winter, we had about 3,000 deaths a day. Now the U.S. is averaging about 300.
ANNA DURBIN: Most people have some underlying immunity that is helpful in fighting the virus - we have antivirals - and I think because of that, we're not seeing a rise in deaths. And that's very reassuring. That tells me that this virus, even BA.5, is not so divergent that it is escaping all arms of the immune system.
AUBREY: And she says, look. As more children are vaccinated and as new boosters become available, boosters that specifically target omicron, this will all be helpful. I mean, these boosters won't halt infections or reinfections completely. But all along, it's been shown that these vaccines and these boosters do help prevent serious illness and death.
KWONG: Allison, something that's also lurking in the back of my brain is just long COVID. What do we know about the long-term consequences of BA.5?
AUBREY: There is new data to show that those who've had COVID more than once may have an elevated risk of long COVID symptoms. I spoke to Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly of the Veterans Affairs Saint Louis Health Care System. He did this big study analyzing lots and lots of medical records. He identified thousands of cases of reinfection, and he saw a wide range of problems diagnosed in the months that followed.
ZIYAD AL-ALY: Some respiratory conditions, you know, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, you know, brain fog and a lot of other conditions, including heart disease, diabetes and kidney disease - so even if you're vaccinated, it's still best - it's absolutely best - to avoid the infection.
AUBREY: So even if it seems really unfashionable and unpopular to wear a mask, there's a lot of BA.5 out there. And he says it's worth it to protect yourself, you know, take steps to reduce your exposure.
KWONG: This is very good take-home advice, Allison. I actually bought some cute masks recently, so I can be fashionable and protected.
AUBREY: All right. I look forward to seeing those in the office.
KWONG: I will rock them for you. I will. Thank you so much for bringing us this reporting.
AUBREY: Good to be here.
KWONG: This episode was produced by Margaret Cirino. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and fact checked by Rachel Carlson. Our senior supervising editor is Gisele Grayson. Terence Samuel is vice president and executive editor. Edith Chapin is vice president and executive editor at large. And Nancy Barnes is our senior vice president of news. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you so much for listening to SHORT WAVE, the daily science podcast from NPR.
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