Remember when the bumper crop of cicadas had everyone covering their ears and wondering when it would end? There's a new cicada in town and it doesn't have anything to do with bugs.
A new COVID-19 variant, named BA.3.2 or "Cicada," is causing concern among public health experts for potentially evading vaccine protections.
BA.3.2 is an offshoot of the BA 3 variant. The COVID strain has been dormant for nearly four years, leading to significant mutations compared to other variants, and causing the name 'cicada' because the pesky creatures re-emerge every few years to cause chaos.
The variant was first detected in South Africa in November 2024 and has since been found in the U.S. Doctors warn that BA.3.2, part of the omicron family, may be more contagious and could potentially evade the vaccine.
In a report released earlier this month, the CDC reported that, through mid-February, BA.3.2 was found in voluntary swabs by four U.S. travelers, the clinical samples of five patients, three tests of airplane wastewater, and 132 wastewater surveillance samples across 25 states.
While BA.3.2 is not yet the dominant strain in the U.S., it has been detected in multiple states and has similar symptoms to other COVID variants. No data suggests it causes more severe cases or is more highly transmissible than other variants.
Although, The TODAY Show noted, this variant is “genetically distinct” from previous variants. “We think it might be able to evade a lot of the immunity already in the population,” says Andrew Pekosz, Ph.D., a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
So, what's a person to do to stay safe? Vaccines may not work well against "cicada" infection, per PolitiFact, "but it will still probably protect against severe illness.
"University of Maryland respiratory expert Dr. Donald Milton said: 'That still makes them worth taking.'
