'Stealth Omicron' Variant Detected In CT + Latest Town-By-Town COVID-19 Updates

CONNECTICUT — Health officials have been monitoring a new coronavirus subvariant that has been detected in at least 40 countries and is responsible for almost 100 cases in the U.S.

And although it is exhausting to even contemplate, a Yale researcher said it has already made its way to Connecticut.

The new flavor, BA.2, is one of at least four omicron offshoots, and has quickly become the dominant version of the virus in Denmark.

Nathan Grubaugh, an associate professor with the Yale School of Public Health, said that BA.2 is more transmissible than its parent, BA.a, moving up the charts quickly throughout Europe, and "likely will become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 in the US too."

At the moment, however, it's not even officially a new variant. Because it is more difficult to identify than the OG strain of omicron, researchers have christened it "stealth omicron."

Grubaugh said his team had detected the first case of the new subvariant in Connecticut, in Fairfield County, on Jan. 8. The reveal "was just a matter of time," according to the virologist, as 10 cases from Massachusetts and four from New York had already been sequenced.

Omicron touched down in the U.S. in November, was detected in Connecticut the first week in December, and has spread extraordinarily swiftly since. It is the nature of viruses to continuously evolve, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The good news is that, while "it's more transmissible than BA.1, there is a lot of recent population immunity from the BA.1 wave, and hopefully not as many susceptible people to infect," according to Grubaugh.

Tom Peacock, a prominent British virologist at Imperial College London, said that BA.1 and BA.2 were alike where it counted: their vulnerability to the existing vaccines.

"There is likely to be minimal differences in vaccine effectiveness against BA.1 and BA.2," Peacock said on Twitter. "Personally, I'm not sure BA.2 is going to have a substantial impact on the current Omicron wave of the pandemic."

On Wednesday, the state Department of Public Health reported the number of hospitalized coronavirus patients in Connecticut was in free fall, dropping 100 beds to 1,346 beds overnight.

DPH does not distinguish among patients who were admitted to a hospital because of COVID-19 symptoms, and those asymptomatic residents admitted for non-COVID reasons who test positive while in the hospital.

The highest number of the hospitalized — 435 — are in Hartford County.

COVID-19 infections in the state have dropped nearly three points overnight, to 10.93 percent, reported by DPH on Wednesday.

The daily coronavirus positivity rate is a function of the number of tests compared to the number of cases confirmed positive each day. Overnight, 2,795 positive cases were logged, out of 25,568 tests taken. The numbers of tests and cases confirmed do not include those taken with at-home self-test kits.

Of the 1,346 COVID-19 patients in Connecticut hospitals, 723 (53.7 percent) are not fully vaccinated.

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For the week beginning Jan. 9, the risk of unvaccinated persons testing positive for COVID-19 as compared to fully vaccinated persons is 3.2 times greater, according to DPH, and their risk of death is 13.9 times greater.

Instructions on how to get COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters in Connecticut are available online, as is a list of walk-up clinics sponsored by DPH.