covid: BA.2 taking over
It seems that the omicron BA.2 variant is spreading rapidly in the world (Europe, Asia ; eg Germany has >250K infections a day) as well as the US now, as per the graph below from https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions . the prevalence of BA.2 is throughout the US but is highest in the Northeast: New York/New Jersey at 39% of the circulating virus and 38.6% in New England. overall the percent of SARS-CoV-2 cases sampled in the US is pretty much doubling every week in the past month and edging out the BA.1 (regular old omicron) variant and, wastewater sampling, a warning sign that tracks with future covid cases in the next few weeks, has found that 38% of sites in the US have had increases in covid on sampling from Feb 26 to March 8: see the wastewater tracker at https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#wastewater-surveillance , which surveys 698 wastewater sites across the country. most of these sites are midwest and eastern...