TOLEDO, Ohio — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is closely watching the BA.2 COVID-19 variant, a sublineage of the highly contagious omicron variant.
Health experts are preparing for another spike in coronavirus cases in the US, as BA.2 spreads in China, Korea and in some places across Europe.
Though the public seemed ready for the pandemic to be over, Toledo-Lucas County Health Commissioner Eric Zgodzinski is not surprised to hear of a new variant beginning to spread.
"Like we've said before, we're going to have these whether it's a week after the last one, two weeks, a month, whatever it might be we're probably going to see another variant, and here it is, we're seeing a variant," Zgodzinski said.
Like the first round of omicron, the BA.2 sub-variant is also highly transmissive, especially for people sharing close quarters like in a home or office.
It was actually first discovered in November of 2021, but is just now becoming the primary variant in some countries.
Zgodzinski said the advice remains the same to protect from serious illness: get your vaccine and booster shots.
He said hospitals and medical staffs are much better prepared to handle future outbreaks than they were even a year ago.
"Those are all great things, but again I caution us to just not rely on those things and feel very, very, very comfortable about COVID, because we individually have to take responsibility on ourselves to make sure that, again, we're not infecting ourselves or infecting somebody else," Zgodzinski said.
He said that even if we do see a new outbreak arise from this variant, he does not expect a return of COVID safety mandates, but rather updated recommendations for best practices, like wearing a mask when out and about and making sure you have a few at home test kits available.
"We're going to have to face these variants as they come at us, and we still have to go out and live our lives. We've got to go to work, there are things we've got to do in our lives, we have to live. But again, there are some basic things, precautions that we can take to make sure we limit the stresses on us and our community," Zgodzinski said.