There are also some suggestions that the new subvariants have evolved to target the lungs—unlike Omicron, which usually resulted in a less dangerous infection of the upper respiratory tract.But there’s good news amid the bad. While cases are going up in the U.K., hospitalizations and deaths are increasing more slowly or even declining so far. “This could mean higher transmissible variants, BA.4 or 5, are in play, [and] these variants are much less severe,” Edwin Michael, an epidemiologist at the Center for Global Health Infectious Disease Research at the University of South Florida, told The Daily Beast.
Source: This May Be the COVID Variant Scientists Are Dreading