BA.2 variant symptoms: Does BA.2 have unique COVID symptoms?

The BA.2 variant of the coronavirus does not appear to have many unique COVID-19 symptoms compared to earlier coronavirus variants.

Driving the news: Dr. Robert Quigley, an infectious disease expert and senior vice president of International SOS, a leading medical and security services company, told the Deseret News in an email that it’s hard to know what symptoms people might experience based on data so far.

• The preliminary data suggests that the BA.2 strain is becoming a more dominant strain of the coronavirus and it can spread 1.5 times faster, he said.
• “Since we are in the early stages of this new variant, it is difficult to say which symptoms are unique to this particular strain,” Quigley said.

Symptoms: The BA.2 variant “is likely to cause mild symptoms in fully vaccinated individuals while those who are not may experience more severe symptoms,” Quigley said.

The bigger picture: Symptoms from the new omicron variant’s subvariant might be mistaken for spring allergies right now because they tend to be more mild, experts recently told CBS News.

• Dr. Celine Gounder, a clinical assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told CBS News that people should take a COVID-19 test if they’re worried about their sniffles, a cough or a stuffy nose.
• “So you have those symptoms, just take a test,” she said.