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New subvariants, family gatherings may bring more Covid-19 after holiday, but experts don’t expect severe surge

New subvariants, family gatherings may bring more Covid-19 after holiday, but experts don't expect severe surge




CNN
 — 

As millions of Americans travel to gather with friends and family over the next few days, there’s a good chance that Covid-19 will follow.

Experts expect that Thanksgiving gatherings will stir up social networks and give new coronavirus subvariants fresh pockets of vulnerable people to infect. As a result, cases and hospitalizations may tick up after the holiday, as they have for the past two years.

Covid-19 is not unique in this regard. Thanksgiving gatherings have the potential to amp up the spread of other viruses too, notably respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and influenza, which are both already at high levels for this time of year.

“We have seen, in some regions, RSV numbers starting to trend downward. Flu numbers are still on the rise. And we are concerned that after holiday gathering, lots of people coming together, that we may see increases in Covid-19 cases as well,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Tuesday on CNN.

But things have been relatively quiet on the Covid-19 front. Experts say it may not stay that way for long.

“Covid positivity is going up,” said Shishi Luo, associate director of bioinformatics and infectious disease at the genetic testing company Helix, which has been monitoring coronavirus variants. “It’s increasing fastest among 18- to 24-year-olds” in the Helix sampling.

It’s the first time test positivity in the Helix data has risen since July.

When test positivity increases, it means a greater proportion of Covid-19 tests are returning positive results, and it can be an indication that transmission is on the rise.

“We should expect more cases,” Luo said. “Whether they’re measured in how we measure cases right now, I don’t know, but I think in general, you should see more people who are sick. I definitely am.”

Increasing cases may not be picked up as quickly by official counts because people are mostly testing for Covid-19 at home and not reporting their results – if they test at all.

The BQ subvariants of Omicron have risen to dominate transmission in the US. BQ.1 and its offshoot BQ.1.1 are descendants of BA.5; they have five and six key mutations, respectively, in their spike proteins that help them evade…

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