On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States calculated that the Omicron BA.4.6 subvariant of coronavirus accounted for roughly 14% of the circulating coronavirus variations in the country, Reuters reported.
The prevalence of the BA.4.6 subvariant is anticipated to increase from the previous week’s 12.7% prevalence to 13.6% in the week ending October 8.
Even while Omicron’s BA.5 subvariant continues to account for 79.2% of instances, the subvariant has been steadily rising in prevalence across the United States.
The BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants have recently been responsible for an increase in new infections around the globe. The United States has begun administering vaccination boosters that have been specially engineered to target the two subvariants.
The BA.4.6 subvariant has been found to be more resistant to COVID-19 antibody treatments, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning to healthcare professionals in early October about the possibility that AstraZeneca’s Evusheld might be ineffective against some variants that it cannot neutralize.
On the basis of laboratory studies, the FDA’s information sheet said that the Omicron BA.4.6 subvariant was most likely to have a reduction in susceptibility to the antibody treatment of more than 1,000-fold.
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