Emerging variants like ‘whack-a-mole’

COVID-19 hospitalizations, deaths continue across Niagara as health system feels strain

Niagara Health reported 87 patients being treated for the virus, up from 85 Monday

COVID-19 has claimed another life in Niagara, while pressures continue at local hospitals.

Niagara Region Public Health reported the death of a Niagaran in the 80-plus age group Tuesday, bringing the official total of COVID-19 patient deaths to 544 since the pandemic began.

There were 1,660 known active infections in the region, with 15 new cases reported, Tuesday.

Niagara Health reported 87 patients being treated for the virus, up from 85 Monday. Six of those patients were in intensive care.

As of Monday, 164 hospital staff and physicians were in self-isolation after potential exposure to the virus, down from 283 last week.

New subvariants emerge

A pair of new Omicron subvariants has emerged, raising the possibility that survivors of earlier Omicron strains can get reinfected.

BA.4 and BA.5 have gained increasing attention in South Africa as weekly coronavirus cases tripled in the past two weeks, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

“It really came out of the blue over the weekend. We were already settling down with BA.2.12.1, and then BA.4 and BA.5?” said Dr. Peter Chinhong, an infectious diseases expert at University of California San Francisco. “It just seems like the latest chapter of a never-ending saga.”

The rapid growth of BA.4 and BA.5 in South Africa has implications for a potential future surge in California and the U.S. Until now, scientists had been reassured that people who survived the first Omicron variant over the winter, BA.1, were unlikely to be reinfected by the even more infectious sub-variant BA.2, which is now dominant nationwide.

“We always need to be worried about new variants that could show up,” he said. “The more infection is spreading, the more opportunity that the virus has to mutate and for new variants to come about that could be concerning.”

In a recent interview, Niagara Health chief of staff Dr. Johan Viljoen described the ever-emerging variant of the virus as “like whack-a mole.”

“We’ve got this one down and then another one pops up. That’s the unpredictability of this sickness. It’s really a dayby-day thing,” Viljoen said. “We do the best we can every day, and there’s always a chance that if we do our best every day then at some point, we are going to close the opportunities for this thing to spread. If we don’t give it the environment within which it can spread, then it won’t.”