Europe sees new Covid wave as summer starts

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) warned last week that "the growth advantage reported for BA.4 and BA.5 suggest that these variants will become dominant" throughout the European Union, and probably result in a surge in cases.

Infections are rising in multiple countries, including Portugal, Germany, France, Greece, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Spain, according to the Our World in Data (OWID) project at the University of Oxford, which tracks the pandemic.

New studies have shown that Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 have a growth advantage compared with earlier variants and appear to be good at evading the immune system. In other words, neither previous infections nor vaccines provide particularly strong protection against the subvariants, which is why they're becoming the dominant strains. BA.4 and BA.5 do not appear to lead to more severe illness, but, as with previous waves, the increase in cases could result in an uptick in hospitalizations and deaths, the ECDC has said.

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