Local health officials are urging the community to remain vigilant as the latest COVID-19 variant – BA.5 – sweeps the United States.
“The COVID-19 virus is continuing to evolve and mutate, creating new variants of the virus that infect thousands of people around the world each day,” Monadnock Community Hospital officials wrote in MCH’s COVID-19 update on Tuesday. “As of mid-July, the CDC reported the BA.5 subvariant of COVID-19 now compromises more than 60 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the United States.”
The update stated that BA.5 is the most-transmissible variant to date and that according to the CDC, almost 90 percent of the country lives in an area with high levels of transmission. BA.5 accounts for 60 percent of COVID cases in New England.
“Even though the new variant is more transmissible, individuals who test positive for COVID-19 with the BA.5 subvariant have not been exhibiting more severe symptoms compared to previous variants,” officials wrote.
Symptoms typically seen in a COVID-19 diagnosis are similar to previous infections, such as fever, cough, shortness of breath, runny nose or congestion, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, body aches, recent loss of taste or smell, nausea and/or vomiting and diarrhea.