life. turning now to concerns over possible summer wave of covid infections. the omicron subvariant ba.5 is now the most dominant strain, making up more than 50% of new cases. health officials say the subvariant is the most contagious version of the virus yet and can more easily evade vaccine protection from previous infections. it s not believed to cause more severe illness. joining us now, an internal and emergency medicine physician. doctor, it s great to see you in person. it s great to be here. let s talk about this subvariant. omicron, this new subvariant is back in our country. it is. it s definitely back. we have some reports that up to 53% of new cases of covid are because of this variant, jose. what are you seeing in your practice? we see the same thing. we re seeing a lot of cases. fortunately, the vaccines that we have so far and a lot of americans got so far, they re incredibly strong against death and hospitalization.
Experts have flagged a new subvariant of the coronavirus for special attention. BA.2.75, an offspring of the omicron BA.2 variant, is spreading quickly in India and could escape our immune response.
deaths per day in my mind is still far too high. but it is certainly much less than we have seen previously. and i think that s for several reasons. one is we do have a lot of people who have been vaccinated. many people who also have been boosted. but also because we know that with this omicron variant, and specifically the subvariants we have circulating right now, they tend to cause less severe disease. so the combination of more protection that is out there, either because people have been previously infected or because they had vaccination or both as well as covid being omicron being a less severe subvariant likely contributes to the reason we don t have more deaths right now. again, in my mind, 250 is still too high. i think the real key here to getting one of the keys to getting young children vaccinated is trust, right? i hear it from friends of mine, from all walks of life. and a key issue in trust is