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Health leaders expect BA.2 variant of coronavirus to become more dominant in coming weeks

coronavirus
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(WXYZ) — When it comes to the spread of COVID-19, the United States and Michigan are in pretty good shape. According to the CDC's latest data, coronavirus cases continue to decline, and community spread is low for most of the country.

However, national health experts have a new concern on the horizon.

At this point, says Dr. Anthony Fauci, the BA.2 subvariant cases abroad are spreading fast but do not appear to be severe. But, he's also bracing for a likely impact here this spring.

"We expect that over the coming weeks," he said. "It likely will be more and more dominant over the BA.1."

One tool for early detection of outbreaks has been wastewater sampling. At nearly one-third of the sampling sites of that type in the country, COVID-19 positive samples are up 1,000% in the last two weeks, but the total number of reported COVID-19 cases in the country is still down.