County of Durham issued the following announcement on July 19.
BA.5 is the currently dominant Omicron variant of COVID-19, which spreads more easily than previous variants.
It's possible to get sick with BA.5 even if you recently recovered from COVID, but vaccines continue to protect against serious illness.
Viruses constantly change through mutation and sometimes these mutations result in a new variant of the virus. Some variants emerge and disappear while others persist. New variants will continue to emerge. CDC and other public health organizations monitor all variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 in the United States and globally.
Scientists monitor all variants but may classify certain ones as variants being monitored, variants of interest, variants of concern and variants of high consequence. Some variants spread more easily and quickly than other variants, which may lead to more cases of COVID-19. Even if a variant causes less severe disease in general, an increase in the overall number of cases could cause an increase in hospitalizations, put more strain on healthcare resources and potentially lead to more deaths.
More info:https://www.cdc.gov/.../2019.../variants/about-variants.html
Original source can be found here.
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