As COVID-19 cases continue to surge, another omicron subvariant has been detected in India.
Coronavirus BA.2.75 is quickly becoming a dominant variant, particularly in areas of the world that saw it first, but it's still too early to say if it's more severe or transmissible than other mutations.
Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, professor of health and infectious diseases, pediatrics and epidemiology and population health at Stanford, told KCBS Radio's "Ask An Expert" BA.2.75 is able to evade the antibodies produced by prior COVID-19 infections.
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"It has become a pretty dominant strain in India," she said. "Of course, as we've seen with essentially all of the other variants, these are highly transmissible and also they are able to escape the immune responses to the previous variants."
As the United States battles subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, health experts are expecting to see a further rise in cases made up of BA.2.75. "We've already had a handful of (BA.2.75) cases in the U.S.," Maldonado said. "We don’t really know much else about it. It’s too soon to know."
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Health experts have not yet seen any alarming signals from India regarding the progression of the disease including severe cases, hospitalizations or deaths. "There's still hospitalizations, but there's nothing that indicates this is worse at this point, so we're hoping for the best," the Stanford professor explained.
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