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BA.2 Subvariant Nows Makes Up 72% Of New COVID-19 Cases

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Another day, another COVID-19 subvariant that could once again send safety protocols back into full effect. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Nowcast, the BA.2 strain made up 72.2% of cases within the U.S. from March 27 to April 4. Other members of the Omicron family include BA.1.1, which made up 25%, and B.1.1.529, making up a miniscule 2.5%.

Of course, the subvariant isn’t just making waves in the States. Across the globe, Omicron accounted for 99.8% of COVID-19 cases within the last week, with BA.2 making up 93.6% of that. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), BA.2 is now dominant within all six of its regions and in 68 countries where data sequencing is available.

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Among the countries that have been most hit by the subvariant include the U.K. — which saw over 225,000 new cases on March 21, the most for them in a single day since early January — Germany, where over 3 million new cases have occured between March 24 to April 6, and Italy, which had close to two million cases in that same span.

As Scientific American notes, BA.2 is vastly different from its predecessors in terms of its genetics. While BA.2 shares many of the 60 mutations BA.1 ended up acquiring that were not in the original SARS-COV-2 virus, BA.2 possesses 28 unique mutations of its own. It also holds the dubious honor of being 30% to 50% more contagious than BA.1.

Still, despite the strong push of the highly-transmissible subvariant in the U.S. and world, health experts like Dr. Christopher Murray maintain that Americans shouldn’t be worried of another possible outbreak that could take improvements two steps back.

Speaking to NBC News, Murray — a University of Washington professor of health metrics sciences — said that he would not be “hugely concerned” with BA.2, and explained he expects it to remain at low levels as the weather warms up over the next few months.

“Right now we’re in this period where immunity is high and we’re heading into the summer and transmission tends to be a bit lower, so the combination should lead in the Northern Hemisphere to pretty low levels after the BA.2 wave.”

Indeed, despite the 72% mark, BA.2 hasn’t made a surge in cases. April 6 saw over 49,000 new cases, but the country has steadily remained around a seven-day average of 29,000 to 30,000 for nearly a month. That’s a significant improvement over the seven-day averages from December to late February, which ranged from 100,000 to 800,000. Meanwhile, the seven-day average for daily deaths has dropped from 1,059 on March 16 to 558 on April 6.

If projections like Murray’s hold true, it would be the first time a COVID-19 subvariant has taken over as the dominant strain in the U.S. without causing an uptick in cases. Of course, there may be several factors at play for why cases haven’t statistically increased just yet, one being that the government is no longer offering free tests for uninsured.

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Another possible reason why is that Americans have built up an immunity, with the latest CDC seroprevalence survey showing that around 95% of the population have some level of combined infection and vaccine-induced seroprevalence. 43% are estimated to have antibodies from just past infections, though attempting to build up protection this way certainly wouldn’t be recommended.

Of course, just because a country-wide outbreak might not occur doesn’t mean specific areas wouldn’t be at risk of severe case rises, some experts told Today. People that live in an area with high population density, along with a low vaccination rate, should be more precautious than those who live in an area with a low population density or higher vaccination rate.

Royal Crest

Queen Elizabeth II to Deliver Christmas Message

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The U.K. is currently embroiled in a major political controversy as the newly-elected Conservative government works to finalize the country’s departure from the European Union. The decision to leave the E.U., known as Brexit, has proved to be one of the country’s more controversial political changes, as the decision led to years of fierce government debate and a historical election in which the Conservative Party gained near-total control of the government for the first time in decades. It is in this context, alongside numerous personal issues relating to the royal family, that Queen Elizabeth II will deliver her yearly Christmas message to the nation.

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Though the message is prerecorded, it will not broadcast until tomorrow, Christmas Day. However, Buckingham Palace released some excerpts from the transcript, revealing that the queen will refer to 2019 as a “quite bumpy” year. It’s not clear as of yet what exactly the queen is referring to, but there are a number of reasons why the year may have felt rough for the queen. The excerpts also reveal that the queen will mention the fact that this year is the 75th anniversary of D-Day and will deliver a general theme highlighting the importance of reconciliation and unity.

Early this year the queen’s husband, the 97-year-old Prince Philip was involved in a car crash that injured two women, leading him to apologize and relinquish his driver’s license, and generating a public debate about older drivers. While the royal family makes every effort to avoid getting directly involved in political matters, some U.K. government functions require the queen’s participation; for instance, this summer the newly-elected Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked the queen to suspend Parliament before his request was ruled unlawful by the U.K. Supreme Court. But perhaps the most controversial event involving the royal family this year was the aftermath of a disastrous interview between Prince Andrew and the BBC, during which he failed to adequately explain the nature of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, leading him ultimately to step down from his public duties, an extremely rare decision for a member of the royal family.

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Right after the queen recorded her Christmas message, her husband was admitted to a hospital in London, where he spent four days, giving the queen a stressful end to an already-stressful year. While the queen generally does not get into specifics about political situations in her country during her Christmas address, she is likely to allude to the political turmoil that Britain underwent in 2019 and its effects on citizens. In this time of intense political conflict, the queen is likely to focus on reconciliation, stressing the importance of unity after an election that virtually guaranteed Brexit and ensured Conservative party rule for the next five years. The queen will say that “small steps taken in faith and in hope can overcome long-held differences and deep-seated divisions to bring harmony and understanding.”

Because the queen follows a principle of remaining neutral with respect to politics, it’s not exactly clear which specific events she is referring to by stressing the importance of mutual understanding and harmony, but it’s not hard to imagine she’s talking about Brexit, which has polarized the nation. The address will be broadcast on the BBC at 3 p.m. local time tomorrow, Christmas Day. The address was filmed in Windsor Castle, in the Green Drawing Room, as the queen sat beside family photos. Notably, Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and their 7-month old son Archie were not present among these photos, further suggesting a rift in the royal family that has been reported in tabloids over the past several months.

Chess

Britain and the E.U. Reach Tentative Brexit Deal

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On Thursday, the European Union and Britain announced that they had reached an agreement for Brexit, just two weeks in advance of the October 31st deadline for departing the organization. Britain’s decision to withdraw from the multi-country alliance, the result of a 2016 referendum in which a narrow majority of British citizens voted to leave, has plunged the country into several years of chaos and intragovernmental conflict, as various parties within the country’s Parliament argued vehemently about how to conduct the extraordinarily complicated process of withdrawal. Tensions have only continued to escalate within the country’s government since they promised to implement the results of the referendum, eventually leading to the election of the highly controversial Boris Johnson to Prime Minister, who campaigned on a promise to “get Brexit done,” no matter what. 

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While all possible scenarios for Brexit are forecasted to have a strongly negative effect on the European economy, with the country’s decision to leave having already led to an economic downturn, the no-deal Brexit scenario is widely considered the worst possible outcome. As such, Johnson’s pledge to leave the EU by October 31st, with or without a deal, has raised alarms within the government and the passing of legislation requiring the Prime Minister to reach an agreement with the EU before leaving. With today’s news, a major hurdle for Boris Johnson has been overcome, though the deal is not official until it passes a vote in Parliament. As previous proposed deals have failed in spectacular fashion to receive a necessary majority vote from members of Parliament, leading to the resignation of then-Prime Minister Theresa May, the future of Brexit is by no means certain.

That being said, the new deal seeks to account for many of the complaints that members of Parliament had about Theresa May’s deal which led to its failure to get through Parliament. Under the revised deal, Northern Ireland will be a part of the U.K. customs territory, instead of being in a separate customs area from the rest of the country, which lawmakers cited as a reason for rejecting the previous deal. The new deal gives a degree of “democratic consent” to Northern Ireland, a part of the U.K. that voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU, as the Northern Ireland assembly will be called to vote on whether to continue this arrangement in the future. 

As the potentially disastrous economic consequences of Brexit become more immediate, however, some U.K. lawmakers are instead calling for a second referendum to hopefully undo the decision to leave the E.U. The Labour party, which opposes the Conservative party led by Johnson, is expected to attempt to force another referendum, under the reasoning that having witnessed several years of governmental chaos has caused a majority of the country to favor staying in the European Union. Public opinion polling has shown that a plurality of U.K. citizens believe, in hindsight, that the decision to leave the E.U. was a mistake, and a second referendum could offer these citizens an opportunity to undo the chaotic results of the previous vote. 

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However, another referendum is unlikely to be conducted before a Parliament vote on whether to accept Johnson’s deal, which is due to be held on Saturday. Though it is difficult to predict the results of Saturday’s vote, members of the opposition party have already publicly criticized the new deal, calling it “a far worse deal than Theresa May’s deal” and raising concerns about its impact on workers’ rights, environmental standards and consumer protection. The U.K.’s membership in the E.U. has long been deeply integrated into the country’s system of government, and as such, concerns about withdrawal apply not only to the European economy but to the impact it could have on the rights and wellbeing of British citizens.