What Are The New Omicron Symptoms?

As of the end of June, Omicron's new BA.4, BA.5 sub-variants accounted for 52 percent of the United States' Covid-19 cases. In France, the BA.4/5 sub-variants accounted for most of the new cases last week.

Experts say that the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of Omicron are much more contagious than the previous BA.1, BA.2 and BA.3 subvariants. These new subvariants are also reported to be more easily able to overcome vaccine and disease acquired immunity.

What are the symptoms of the Omicron variant?

While the first symptoms of coronavirus include high fever and cough, these symptoms are less common in the Omicron variant. The most common symptoms detected so far in the Omicron variant are as follows:

• runny nose
• Headache
• Tiredness
• Sneeze
• sore throat
• joint pains

In addition, unlike other variants, according to the latest findings by Omicron, symptoms such as nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea were observed in patients with the Omicron variant.

What are the symptoms of Omicron's new subvariants BA.4 and BA.5?

In addition to the known symptoms of Covid-19, such as fever, cough, sore throat and weakness, symptoms such as runny nose, nausea and vomiting are more common in the BA.4/5 variant.

Loss of taste and smell, which was not common in the first variants of Omicron, returned in the new subvariants, according to the Center for Public Health in France, where BA.4/5 sub-variants accounted for the majority of cases.

"Symptoms such as loss of smell and taste, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea are much more common than in the previous sub-variants," the center said. warns.

How effective are the vaccines against the new variants?

Experts say each new subvariant is more resistant to the vaccine than the previous one.

However, current vaccines continue to be effective against death and severe disease in BA.4/5 sub-variants.

Pfizer and BioNTec continue to work on making their vaccines more effective against Omicron. The companies state that the newly developed vaccine candidate is 15 times more effective against the BA.1 subvariant.

Stating that the same vaccine is more effective against BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants, but not as much as the previous sub-variants, the companies say that they will continue to collect data against new sub-variants in the coming weeks.

Virologist Kei Sato of the University of Tokyo says the BA.4/5 subvariants will not be the last. "No one can say that these are the final variants. It is highly likely that other sub-variants of Omicron will emerge," says Kei Sato.

On the other hand, the obligation to wear masks in most countries was lifted months ago. Experts especially call for high-risk people to wear masks and pay attention to social distance rules, although it is not mandatory.