NEW YORK State health officials are alerting the public to two new viral subvariants — offshoots of Omicron’s BA.2 virus — that are spreading more quickly through the central part of that state.

The new branches of BA.2’s family tree are BA.2.12 and BA.2.12.1. They are growing about 25% faster than BA.2, particularly in the central part, according to a news release from the New York state department of health.

These subvariants are now causing more than 90% of infections in Central New York and the neighboring Finger Lakes region.

COVID-19 cases are on the rise again in the United States overall, but they’re growing extra fast in New York state. Average daily cases in the state have doubled in a little over two weeks.

Daily reported cases are still a fraction of what they were at the height of the Omicron surge, but New York’s case rate is one of the highest in the country right now. COVID-19 hospitalizations have also started to tick up in the state, pushing some counties — especially those where the new subvariants have taken hold — into a “high COVID-19 Community Level” where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal indoor masking.

It’s not the first time these subvariants have made an appearance. They’ve been reported in at least 50 U.S. states and territories since January 2022, according to the website GISAID.org, a global effort to track the evolution of the virus that causes COVID-19. BA 2.12 has also been spotted in the United Kingdom, India, Germany and Canada according to the database.

Dr. Wesley Long, an associate professor of pathology and genomic medicine at Houston Methodist Hospital said he identified over 80 COVID-19 cases in Houston caused by these subvariants since early January, when BA.2 first appeared. However, the subvariants do not seem to show any advantage over BA.2 in terms of spread or transmission in Houston. The increased growth rate identified by New York state officials may not be an inherent property of these subvariants, but more likely something that’s happened “by chance,” Long told CNN. (SD-Agencies)