This is the John Fugel-Sang Podcast.

I want to play really quickly.

We haven't talked about COVID and this is the week we will most likely hit officially

1 million American deaths. Here is CDC Director Rochelle Whelensky giving an update on the

BA2 sub-variant coming soon to a town near you.

CDC has been closely tracking the BA-2 sub-linear of the omicron variant carefully.

The variant has been in the United States

for about the past two months,

and it has been slowly increasing in proportion

compared to B.A.1.

This week, we estimate that BA2 represents about 35% of circulating variants

nationally. As we're learning from our colleagues in Europe, Asia, and South Africa, where B.A.2 has resulted in varied

piece of cases. There's no evidence that B.A.2 variant results in more severe

disease. Nor does it appear to be more likely to a in more

likely to evade our immune protection.

However, it does have increased transmission

in comparison to the related BA1 omercron variant that's circulated in this US this past winter.

Over the past week we have seen a small increase in reported COVID-19 cases in New York

state and New York City and some increases in people in the hospital

with COVID-19 in New England, specifically where the BA-2 variant has been reaching levels above 50%.

This small increase in cases in the northeast

is something that we are closely watching

...