cbs danya bacchus is in los angeles with more on that. danya, good evening. reporter: good evening, jericka. icu admissions and deaths are not increasing at the same pace as new infections, but health officials here say they don t want to wait until hospitals are overwhelmed to try to slow the spread of omicron. crowds in los angeles are showing few signs of covid precautions as a rise in cases fueled by the most contagious subvariant could soon trigger the return of indoor mask mandates. nationwide, ba.5 is responsible for more than half of all new cases. cbs news medical contributor dr. david agus says a prior infection may not stop the strain. you can get reinfected now. reporter: do you think americans are still taking this virus seriously? americans have moved on from covid-19. the problem is covid-19 hasn t moved on from america. reporter: nearly 60% of the population is living in a high
Shanghai reported its first case of the BA.5 sub-variant on Sunday, warning of "very high” risks as the city’s rising Covid outbreak sparks fears of a return to its earlier lockdown.
Singapore is ready to bring in booster vaccines for Omicron subvariants that are fast becoming the dominant variants here should they be approved, said the Ministry of Health (MOH).
subvariant, especially the ba.4 and the ba.5. and it is important to point out that vaccination is the best way of continuing to protect yourself. at least one of these continues to be fairly vaccine evasive. now in terms of the number, just look at the map. it is like what we used to do back in 2020 and 2021 when you see a community transmission in various parts of the country. i m not sure if we have the statistics. but you do have various places like new york city, where we do have roughly 14% test positivity. that is one of the highest transmissions numbers that we ve seen in really months. so much that that city officials here in new york city are basically reissuing the recommendation and advisory that if you can, to wear high grade masks indoors, in public spaces, and in crowded outdoor spaces. new york city air adams mayor
that s great news. but we re seeing more people that go to the ers because they re feeling feverish and fatigue and then they turn out to have covid. and they re talking about now moderna and pfizer looking into maybe fine-tuning their boosters for the fall for this new variant. but is that something like, you know, is this variant going to go through the population and a new variant comes up before the fall? it s quite possible. but what is mind blowing is we re talking about this, right? we re talking about a manufacturer, a vaccine manufacturer, creating or tweaking a vaccine so it s more appropriate for a subvariant that we just found. yeah. the early research out of the university of tokyo suggests these new variants are targeting lungs again. that would be kind of different from the original omicron. have you been seeing any of that? no. no, i ve heard this news. we ve read about these case reports, but we haven t been able to conclude that that is what s happening in the