By NOAH TABORDA
Kansas News Service
TOPEKA — While publicly available data may lag, medical experts at a Kansas hospital system say the prevalence of the BA.2 variant of COVID-19 is slowly rising and is already affecting pandemic response.
The variant has yet to become the most prevalent strain in Kansas, but as cases become more common in some areas of the country, especially in the northeast, public health leaders are having to make quick changes in response. On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration limited the use of sotrovimab, a COVID-19 monoclonal antibody therapy, because it does not work against BA.2.
States where the variant is prevalent no longer have FDA authorization to use the treatment.
In addition, reports suggest President Joe Biden is planning an additional round of booster shots for older adults in the coming weeks.
“We have not been using sotrovimab now for a week and a half or two weeks,” said Dana Hawkinson, director of infection prevention at the University of Kansas Health System, adding that, “we do know the prevalence of BA.2 is increasing (in Kansas) but overall, we still are not seeing a large increase in cases.”
Sotrovimab was the last monoclonal antibody unaffected by new coronavirus strains after the FDA revoked authorizations for several other antibody therapies that did not work against the Omicron variant.
According to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, about 35% of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. were caused by BA.2. In monitoring by the CDC, the region including Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut saw more than half of the cases linked to the variant.
Since the onset of the pandemic, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment has recorded more than 750,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 8,000 deaths.
While case numbers appear to be leveling off in Kansas, Stephen Stites, chief medical officer at the University of Kansas Health System, said doctors are still treating patients. Currently, half of those patients are at KU Health System for COVID-19-related issues, and the other half are there with COVID-19.
“If you’ve been vaccinated, you’re more likely to be asymptomatic, so you may come in positive, but you may be coming in for your hip surgery or your back surgery, and we still register you as positive because that’s what we’re required to do,” Stites said.
He reiterated that the best way to avoid being part of the group in the hospital specifically for COVID-19 related complications was to get not just vaccinated but boosted. He noted a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showing the importance of the additional shot.
“It was people who had two doses of the Pfizer vaccine could either get a placebo for their booster or a real dose of vaccination to test the real-world effectiveness of vaccine booster vaccinations,” Stites said. “What they found was a 95% 98% reduction in serious hospitalization and death if you’ve had the booster vaccination, against if you had not had the booster vaccination.”