Dr. Stephanie Silvera Agrees: Vaccines are still effective against the highly contagious BA.2 sub-variant

White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci warned of a rising highly contagious COVID omicron variant called BA.2, according to ABC’s This Week.

“It does have increased transmission capability,” Fauci said. But all is not lost. The variant still responds to vaccines. “However, when you look at the cases, they do not appear to be any more severe and they do not appear to evade immune responses either from vaccines or prior infections,” Fauci added.

What still remains unknown is if BA.2 causes as severe symptoms as did omicron BA.1.

“We often don’t know until it’s too late,” Dr. Stephanie Silvera, infectious disease specialist, and Professor in the Public Health Department told USA Today. “That’s been the problem with managing these surges. Deaths are one of the last impacts we see.”