Europe’s rising caseloads could foreshadow a 2nd Omicron surge in the U.S.

Experts warn that another coronavirus wave may be imminent in the United States, fueled a more contagious omicron subvariant that is spreading rapidly in Europe, although they said the trend was more a cause for caution than alarm.
The omicron variant this month began its second sweep through Europe, where past virus surges have been a harbinger of what was to come in the United States. Many countries thought they were free of the worst of COVID and raced to lift restrictions in February and March, but a highly transmissible omicron subvariant, BA.2, is contributing to the new surge.

Some countries, including Germany and Austria, are again approaching record levels of caseloads or have even exceeded them. Cases per capita in Europe were already far higher than any other region in the world when they began creeping up again earlier this month. The Continent is now recording 95 cases per 100,000 people, after bottoming out at 87 on March 3; the United States and Canada, comparison, are recording 10 cases per 100,000 people, according to a New York Times database.
On Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, told Politico that “you’ve got to at least be prepared that we may see something similar here with some differences, because there’s always differences,” regarding the surge of cases in Europe.
“We’ve got to monitor it very carefully,” Fauci added.
Throughout the pandemic, COVID trends in the United States have lagged Europe’s a few weeks. And U.S. wastewater data is already showing signs of a new increase.
About 38% of active U.S. wastewater sampling sites reported an increase in coronavirus levels from Feb. 26 to March 12, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s wastewater data tracker, which surveys 698 wastewater sites across the country.

Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University, said that the data was a sign that people should be cautious.
The BA.1 subvariant remains the predominant omicron subvariant in the United States, but BA.2 is more contagious and spreading fast, so El-Sadr said it was important for Americans to be vaccinated and boosted. “This will protect us from what’s coming next,” she said.