US COVID-19 Cases May See 'Uptick' Soon; New Variant Is 50% More Infectious: Fauci

The United States may see another uptick of COVID-19 cases caused by a new variant that is more infectious than the Omicron variant, White House chief medical advisor and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NAIAD) Dr. Anthony Fauci has said.

The BA.2 variant, an offshoot strain of the Omicron variant, is about 50% to 60% more infectious. However, the variant does not appear to be more severe than the Omicron strain, the expert said.

“It does have increased transmission capability,” Fauci said during an interview on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “However, when you look at the cases, they do not appear to be any more severe and they do not appear to evade immune responses either from vaccines or prior infections.”

Fauci added that while BA.2 could become the dominant strain in the U.S., he believes it is unlikely to cause a massive surge of cases, citing the situation in the U.K. where daily case counts and hospitalizations are on the upswing amid the spread of the omicron subvariant.

"The bottom line is we likely will see an uptick in cases as we’ve seen in the European countries, particularly the UK, where … they have BA.2. Hopefully, we won’t see a surge. I don’t think we will," Fauci added.

During an interview with CNBC, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a board member of COVID-19 vaccine maker Pfizer and former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, also expressed similar views on the BA.2 variant, adding that he does not expect a “big wave of infection.”

BA.2 is a sublineage of the Omicron variant, dubbed by experts as “stealth variant,” because it is hard to detect. The subvariant has several key mutations, some of which it shares with the original Omicron variant, but some genetic changes are not seen in the initial version.

Preliminary data indicated that vaccinations and booster shots are still effective in preventing symptomatic cases and hospitalizations caused by the offshoot Omicron variant.

The COVID-19 case numbers across the U.S. are continuously seeing a decline. However, the BA.2 variant makes up 20% of all infections in the Midwest and up to 39% of cases reported in New York and New Jersey.

In the Northeast, BA.2 makes up for 38.6% of all cases. In comparison, the variant only made up 24% of cases as of the previous week, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed.

As of Sunday, the stealth variant makes up 23.1% of all cases in the U.S.