BONUS - Here We Go Again: The BA.2 Version of Omicron
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 22 March 2022
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Virologist Dr. Andrew Pekosz returns to the podcast to talk with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about BA.2, a "not unexpected but tiring" new sibling of the omicron variant. They discuss who should be most concerned about getting sick and what might happen in the coming weeks. They also discuss reports of "deltacron," a viral recombination of delta and omicron, and what we can learn from Hong Kong and China's COVID crises about the omicron variant.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 5 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former |
| 0:19.1 | health commissioner here in Baltimore, Maryland. |
| 0:21.7 | Our goal with this podcast is to bring scientific evidence and experience to shed light on critical |
| 0:27.5 | health issues. If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health |
| 0:33.0 | question at jhhhu.edu. That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:42.4 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of public health on call. Here we go again. In a bonus episode |
| 0:49.4 | today, Dr. Josh Sharfstein talks to virologist, Professor Andrew Pecoche about the latest news on COVID variants, |
| 0:56.4 | including why the more things change, |
| 0:59.0 | the more the best advice about safety stays the same. |
| 1:02.2 | Let's listen. |
| 1:05.2 | Dr. Pecoch, it is good to see you, |
| 1:07.9 | although I'm not thrilled to be here talking about another coronavirus variant. |
| 1:12.6 | Tell us what's going on. |
| 1:15.3 | Well, you know, when Omicron emerged around Thanksgiving in South Africa, you know, three different versions of Omicron were sort of lumped together. |
| 1:26.3 | They're called BA1, BA2, and BA3. |
| 1:29.5 | You know, we saw this BA1 that caused most of the cases globally throughout December and January. |
| 1:37.1 | And what we're seeing now is BA2, its sibling, is sort of following along its footsteps and making some inroads in terms of causing cases globally. |
| 1:49.6 | They're very closely related, but distinct. |
| 1:53.0 | All the properties of BA2 so far seem to be very similar to what we saw with BA1 in terms of its ability to escape vaccines and its transmission |
| 2:04.6 | rate and it's relatively low potential for causing severe disease compared to something like |
| 2:11.4 | Delta. So it's yet another variant that's working its way across the world. As a virologist, it's not unexpected, but certainly |
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