Infections with the BA.3.2 variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID are still at very low levels, but experts fear it may resist immunity offered by vaccines or previous infection.
By Lewis asked. edited by Claire Cameron
A new variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID, nicknamed “Cicada”, is circulating.
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A new variant of the virus that causes COVID is spreading in the United States. The “Cicada” variant, officially known as BA.3.2was first detected in South Africa in November 2024. But infection rates in the United States have been slowly increasing since last fall, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The cicada is notable because it has a highly mutated genetic sequence that some experts believe may allow it to evade some of our immunity from vaccination or previous COVID infection.
The variant had been detected in 23 countries as of February, the CDC report said. The agency’s genomic surveillance program first detected the variant in the United States last June in a traveler from the Netherlands. It later showed up in nasal swabs taken from four travelers, three airplane sewage samples, five clinical patient samples and 132 sewage samples from 25 states, according to the report published March 19 in the CDC journal. Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report.
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The BA.3.2 variant has about 70 to 75 mutations in the genetic sequence of its spike protein (the protein the virus uses to infect cells) compared to the strains included in last fall’s COVID vaccines: the JN.1 variant and its descendant LP.8.1. And in laboratory studies, the Cicada variant was able to evade antibodies, “highlighting the need for continued genomic surveillance and observational assessments of the effectiveness of vaccines and antivirals,” the report’s authors write.
Yet Cicada represents only a tiny fraction of COVID cases in the United States — less than 0.2% of sequences collected between December 1, 2025 and February 11, 2026. And it has not been associated with higher COVID cases overall.
Although COVID is no longer as severe as it was in the early years of the pandemic, it has nonetheless caused an estimated 390,000 to 550,000 hospitalizations and 45,000 to 64,000 deaths during the 2024-2025 respiratory virus season — and preliminary estimates of 110,000 to 210,000 hospitalizations and 12 000 to 37,000 deaths between October 1, 2025 and March 21, 2026, depending on CDC data.
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