Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/OsPEBimYMVs   The good news: studies from South Africa show that the Omicron subvariant BA.2 that I call Omicron 2, while appearing to spread faster than Omicron 1, does not cause more severe disease.  The bad news: researchers in Denmark have identified a subtype of Omicron 2, so-called BA.2+H78Y, that is even better than Omicron 1 or 2  at evading preexisting CoVid immunity from either vaccination or natural infection and threatens to become the dominant Omicron form.   The South African group utilized their national clinical databases and laboratory test data that pinpoint the Omicron subtype of each infection to compare the risks of hospitalization and the most severe disease in hospitalized patients for those persons infected with Omicron2 versus Omicron1.  Studying a total of 680,555 CoVid positive persons during the months of December 2021 through January 2022, the risk of hospitalization was not statistically different for those infected with Omicron2 versus Omicron1.  The