As BA.5 variant spreads, risk of coronavirus reinfection grows in U.S.: report

NEW YORK, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The latest Omicron offshoot, BA.5, has quickly become dominant in the United States, and thanks to its elusiveness when encountering the human immune system, is driving a wave of cases across the country, reported The Washington Post on Sunday.

The size of that wave is unclear because most people are testing at home or not testing at all, said the report, noting that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the past week has reported a little more than 100,000 new cases a day on average.

But infectious-disease experts know that wildly underestimates the true number, which may be as many as a million, said Eric Topol, a professor at Scripps Research who closely tracks pandemic trends.

Antibodies from vaccines and previous coronavirus infections offer limited protection against BA.5, leading Topol to call it "the worst version of the virus that we've seen."

"There is widespread agreement among infectious-disease experts that this remains a dangerous virus that causes illnesses of unpredictable severity - and they say the country is not doing enough to limit transmission," added the report.