A health expert has warned about the highly-infectious nature of the Omicron BA.5 Covid variant.
While Covid infection rates have been kept relatively under control by vaccinations, antibody treatments and natural immunity from previous exposure, experts have warned that new variants can reinfect people with immunity as quickly as a few weeks. Western Autralia's chief health officer Andrew Robertson warned news.com.au : "They (new variants) seem to be able to evade the protection from either having had a previous infection with BA2 or having had a vaccine.
“What we are seeing is an increasing number of people who have been infected with BA2 and then becoming infected (again) after four weeks,” he said.
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“So maybe six to eight weeks (later) they are developing a second infection and that’s almost certainly either BA4 or BA5.” According to the latest government figures, covid cases in England has risen by 26.5 per cent in a week to 139,722 infections.
The latest Covid information on gov.uk states that the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants are rapidly becoming the most dominant in the UK, The Mirror reports. It further states: "UKHSA’s latest analysis suggests that Omicron BA.5 is growing 35.1% faster than Omicron BA.2, while Omicron BA.4 is growing approximately 19.1% faster.
"This suggests that BA.5 is likely to become the dominant Covid-19 variant in the UK. The increasing prevalence of Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 is likely to be a factor in the recent increase in cases seen in the UK and elsewhere, though there is currently no evidence that Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 cause more severe illness than previous variants.”
However, it is believed so far that the BA.4 and BA.5 reinfections were thought to be less severe than earlier Covid outbreaks, according to DR David Dowdy, an epidemiologist ant John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
He added that as the virus evolves and develops resistance to antibodies, the body's immune system will also develop to deal with it more effectively.
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