THE more contagious sister of Omicron now accounts for up to 40 per cent of COVID cases in the state, with Hunter health officials warning it's "at least" 30 per cent more infectious.
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As the region recorded 902 new COVID cases, Hunter New England Health physician Dr David Durrheim said a highly transmissible new sub-variant of Omicron - known as BA.2 - was first detected in the Philippines late last year.
Dr Durrheim said Omicron - also known as BA.1 - was twice as transmissible as Delta, but the more infectious BA.2 was beginning to "bump" it as the dominant strain.
"It looks like it has a similar severity profile, but a third dose of vaccine is more protective against it than BA.1," Dr Durrheim said.
"If you have had a recent third dose of vaccine you are at least 70 per cent protected against symptomatic disease with BA.2. That third dose gives robust protection."
Dr Durrheim said he would like to see the third-dose vaccine rates improve in Hunter New England.
While third dose rates were above 95 per cent for people aged in their 70s and 80s, there was a lot of "room for improvement" among the younger age groups.
"Every day I see a death certificate, or more than one death certificate, for people in their 50s or 60s who have only had two doses of vaccine," Dr Durrheim said.
"These are often preventable deaths, and I'd encourage everyone who hasn't had a third dose to do so."
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Dr Durrheim said 80.4 per cent of Hunter people aged 60-to-69 had received a third dose of the COVID vaccine.
But just 64 per cent of people aged in their 50s, 53 per cent of people in their 40s, 43.8 per cent of people in their 30s, and 30 per cent of people under 30 had received a third dose.
"We would love to see everybody heading towards that 95 per cent mark," he said. "The primary vaccine course is really a three-dose course."
Dr Durrheim said they now had "really compelling" evidence that mask-wearing reduces COVID transmission risk by 50 per cent.
"Mask-wearing doesn't need to be mandatory to be sensible," he said. "If people want to protect themselves, wearing a mask is a jolly sensible thing to do particularly in an indoors, crowded environment or where people might be singing and shouting. You can also continue to avoid high risk environments too."
- This story originally appeared on the Newcastle Herald
Anita Beaumont
Anita Beaumont is a health and general news reporter at the Newcastle Herald.
Anita Beaumont is a health and general news reporter at the Newcastle Herald.
