Raphael Stevens

Workers at a Starbucks location in Mesa, Arizona, voted in favor of forming a union.
It’s now the third company-owned Starbucks location to vote in support of unionizing and the first outside of the Buffalo, New York, area.
The union’s next challenge is negotiating a contract with Starbucks.

Workers at a Starbucks location in Mesa, Arizona, voted in favor of forming a union, dealing a blow to the coffee chain as it faces a widespread organizing push from its company-owned cafes.
Employees at the cafe, which is located on Power Road and Baseline Road in Mesa, voted 25 to three in favor of unionizing under Workers United, a branch of the Service Employees International Union.

It’s now the third company-owned Starbucks location to vote in support of unionizing and the first outside of the Buffalo, New York, area.
To date, more than 100 Starbucks locations have filed for union elections, all within the last six months and doubling their count in the last month alone after victories in Buffalo. Those cafes represent a small fraction of Starbucks’ U.S. footprint, which includes nearly 9,000 company-owned restaurants, but it’s a sign that the restaurant industry could see its historically low unionization rate rise.
A second store in Mesa, Arizona, has also filed for a union election. Ballots from the National Labor Relations Board were sent out Friday afternoon and will have to be received by March 18.

Michelle Eisen, a barista at the Buffalo, NY, Elmwood Starbucks location, the first Starbuck location to unionize, helps out the local Starbucks Workers United, employees of a local Starbucks, as they gather at a local union hall to cast votes to unionize or not, Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022, in Mesa, Ariz.
Ross D. Franklin | AP

The National Labor Relations Board’s regional director will now have to certify the ballots, a process that could take up to a week. Then the union faces its next challenge: negotiating a contract with Starbucks. Labor laws don’t require that the employer and union reach a collective bargaining agreement. On top of that, workers who lose faith in the union can petition to decertify after a year, putting a ticking clock on negotiations.
After Starbucks workers at its Elmwood location in Buffalo, New York, won the first union for employees of a company-owned location, Starbucks’ North American head Rossann Williams wrote a letter to all U.S. baristas, saying the company would bargain “in good faith.”

“We are excited and hopeful to start the bargaining process with Starbucks, but we also know that Starbucks is fighting us tooth and nail,” Liz Alanna, a shift supervisor at the Mesa store, said in a statement. “We’re calling on Starbucks to stop their war against the labor movement and work with us, not against us.” 
Starbucks did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
Jefferies analyst Andy Barish wrote in a Thursday note to clients that unionizing doesn’t appear to be a major financial risk to Starbucks in terms of large hourly wage increases or benefit demands. However, the chain could suffer damage to its reputation if handled improperly, he said.
Starbucks has already faced allegations of union busting from Starbucks Workers United. The company has denied those claims. Its opposition to the union effort has included sending executives to Buffalo and Mesa stores.
“It is hard to imagine this issue turning into a maelstrom of negative PR for SBUX, but it does surely present near-term ‘headline risk’ for the stock, which has been weak of late,” Barish wrote.
Shares of Starbucks have fallen 11% over the last 12 months, dragging its market value down to $106 billion.
Three more Buffalo-area Starbucks locations have cast their ballots on whether to form a union, but Starbucks’ appeals to the National Labor Relations Board have led to a delay in the vote count. Mesa’s vote tally was also delayed for the same reason. Workers were originally expected to hear the result on Feb. 16.
Correction: This article was updated to reflect that Starbucks workers at the Elmwood location in Buffalo, New York, won the first union for employees of a company-owned store. An earlier version misidentified the location.

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Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

It’s that time again! “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer rings the lightning round bell, which means he’s giving his answers to callers’ stock questions at rapid speed.

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Cedar Fair LP: “I like that one very much, you stay there [and don’t sell] … I think the stock goes much higher.”

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Ciena Corp: “I don’t really care for CIEN, because I’ve got Cisco all the way down here at $55 [a share], and they just reported an unbelievable quarter. Why do we have go down to Ciena?”

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Roblox: “It’s too low to sell … you’ve got to start making things and do stuff and make them money doing it, and return to shareholders. Now, the company does not do the latter two, and that’s why it will not go up very much.”

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Hertz Global Holdings Inc.: “Smart money is dumb. They should be buying this thing. [Stephen] Scherr is the CEO. He used to be the Goldman CFO. He is dynamite and he’s going to come on the show. Now, he doesn’t know that, but he will.”

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MP Materials Corp: “I think MP’s real. … They promised, they delivered, and it goes higher and I like them.”

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The federal government on Friday announced a record $4.37 billion sale of six offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York and New Jersey.
The auction by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is the first offshore wind lease sale under President Joe Biden.
Once the sites are fully developed, the sale of more than 488,000 acres is expected to produce up to 7 gigawatts of clean energy, enough to power nearly 2 million homes, the agency said.

Offshore wind farm.
davee hughes uk | Moment | Getty Images

The federal government on Friday announced a record $4.37 billion sale of six offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York and New Jersey, moving forward the Biden administration’s goal to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
The auction by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is the first offshore wind lease sale under President Joe Biden. Once the sites are fully developed, the sale of more than 488,000 acres is expected to produce up to 7 gigawatts of clean energy, enough to power nearly 2 million homes, the agency said.

The Biden administration, as part of its broader agenda to address climate change, has committed to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes. The U.S. offshore wind energy sector presents a $109 billion revenue opportunity to businesses in the supply chain in the next 10 years, according to a recent report by the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, an independent project at the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment.
The U.S. currently has only two offshore wind facilities, off the coasts of Rhode Island and Virginia. The Biden administration last year approved development of the country’s first commercial offshore wind farm located off the Massachusetts coast. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is also set to review more than a dozen plans for commercial offshore wind facilities by 2025.
This week’s auction allowed offshore wind developers to bid on six offshore wind energy lease areas. The top bidder was Bight Wind Holdings, which paid $1.1 billion for a 125,964 acre tract off the coast of Long Beach Island in New Jersey.

More from CNBC Climate:

“This week’s offshore wind sale makes one thing clear: the enthusiasm for the clean energy economy is undeniable and it’s here to stay,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.
“The investments we are seeing today will play an important role in delivering on the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to tackle the climate crisis and create thousands of good-paying, union jobs across the nation,” Haaland said.

The National Ocean Industries Association, an offshore energy industry organization, called the auction a watershed moment for the U.S. offshore wind sector and said it reflected the industry’s continued growth.
“The record-shattering interest in the New York Bight lease sale is testament to how bright the American offshore wind outlook is and how confident developers are in the strength of the U.S. offshore wind industry as a whole,” NOIA President Erik Milito said in a statement.
The American Clean Power Association, a trade group that represents the renewable energy industry, said it supported the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s goal to conduct six more lease sales through 2024.
“Development from this sale will create and support tens of thousands of new domestic jobs and help to revitalize our coastal communities,” ACPA CEO Heather Zichal said in a statement.
“We challenge policymakers to provide even more certainty to this new industry, ensuring that the American people benefit from its growth and job-creating potential,” Zichal said. “For too long the U.S. has lagged behind other countries in offshore wind development.”

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More than 70% of Americans live in communities where wearing masks is no longer recommended under the new CDC guidelines.
“With widespread population immunity, the overall risk of severe disease is now generally lower,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC has shifted its focus to hospitalizations, rather than infections alone, to determine when masks are recommended.
Hospitalizations have fallen sharply to about 57,500 patients with Covid in the U.S. as of Thursday from a high mark of more than 159,000 on Jan. 20

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed its mask guidance on Friday, allowing most people to ditch their face coverings as long as Covid-19 hospitalizations in their communities remain low.
Under the new CDC guidance, people are advised to wear masks in public areas indoors, including schools, when there’s a lot of virus circulation in their communities that could overwhelm local hospitals. More than 70% of Americans live in communities where wearing masks is no longer recommended under the new CDC guidelines, because hospitals are not under severe threat from disease there.

The CDC’s new focus on the impact of severe disease on hospitals marks a significant shift away from the agency’s previous use of Covid infections as the key metric in issuing public health guidance.
“With widespread population immunity, the overall risk of severe disease is now generally lower,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters during a call on Friday. “This updated approach focuses on directing our prevention efforts towards protecting people of high risk for severe illness and preventing hospitals and health-care systems from being overwhelmed.”
People can check whether masks are recommended for their county at the CDC’s website. Under a color-coded system, people who live in green counties with low Covid levels do not need to wear masks. People who are at high risk and live in yellow counties where there’s a medium Covid level should consult with their doctor about wearing a mask. People who live in red counties with high Covid levels should wear masks in indoor public places and schools.
Under the new guidance, masks won’t be recommended indoors if average new cases fall below 200 per 100,000 residents, there are fewer than 10 Covid hospital admissions per 100,000 people over the past week and Covid patients are taking up less than 10% of available hospital beds, based on a seven-day average. If cases exceed 200 per 100,000 people, masks would be recommended indoors if new weekly Covid admissions exceed 10 per 100,000 people and patients are taking up 10% or more of hospital beds, based on a seven-day average, according to the CDC’s new guidance.

Arrows pointing outwards

New York and California lifted mask mandates for indoor public places earlier this month as infections fell, prompting questions about whether the CDC would also change its guidance.

The CDC last made a big change to its mask guidance in July 2021 when the delta variant was sweeping the U.S. At that time, the CDC recommended that people wear masks in indoor public places, regardless of vaccination status, in areas of the U.S. where transmission of the virus is high.
The guidance from the summer remained in place as the more contagious omicron variant displaced delta in December, setting off the largest wave of infection since the pandemic began. However, scientists and public health officials later found that omicron generally doesn’t make people as sick as delta. As infections soared to an unprecedented level, hospitalizations and deaths did not rise at the same rate.
The U.S. is reporting a seven-day average of about 75,000 new cases per day, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, a 91% decline from the pandemic record of more than 800,000 average daily cases seen on Jan. 15.

CNBC Health & Science

Hospitalizations have also fallen sharply, to about 57,500 patients with Covid in the U.S. as of Thursday from a high mark of more than 159,000 on Jan. 20, based on a seven-day average of data from the Health and Human Services Department. The daily Covid death toll reached its highest level in nearly a year on Feb. 1 at an average of more than 2,600 per day, and has since fallen to about 1,740, Hopkins data shows.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the data used to determine whether people live in a community where masks are recommended. The data has been updated.

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Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday previewed next week’s earnings slate and other pivotal market events.
The “Mad Money” host said he believes Wall Street’s primary focus will be on inflation.
“Fortunately, even after today’s run, the averages remain somewhat oversold, but unfortunately inflation is sky-high right now,” Cramer said.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday previewed next week’s earnings slate and other pivotal market events, including congressional testimony from Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell.
Given the calendar, the “Mad Money” host said he believes Wall Street’s primary focus will shift from Ukraine to the economy, specifically price pressures.

“Fortunately, even after today’s run, the averages remain somewhat oversold, but unfortunately inflation is sky-high right now,” Cramer said.
All earnings and revenue estimates are courtesy of FactSet.

Arrows pointing outwards

Jim Cramer’s game plan for the trading week of Feb. 28
Mad Money with Jim Cramer

Monday: Workday, HP Inc. and Zoom Video

Workday

Q4 2022 earnings release after the close; conference call at 4:30 p.m. ET Monday
Projected EPS: 71 cents
Projected revenue: $1.36 billion

Cramer said Workday’s “problem” is its stock is expensive based on earnings, so it may get hit even if its quarter is solid.
HP Inc.

Q1 2022 earnings release after the bell; conference call at 5 p.m. ET Monday
Projected EPS: $1.02
Projected sales: $16.52 billion

Cramer said investors need to be careful with HP ahead of the print because its rival in the PC industry, Dell Technologies, reported Thursday night and was hurt by supply chain issues.
Zoom Video

Q4 2022 earnings after the close; conference call at 5 p.m. ET Monday
Projected EPS: $1.11
Projected revenue: $1.25 billion

“You have to be concerned about their business and whether it holds up as the pandemic recedes,” Cramer said.

Tuesday: Target, Kohl’s, Domino’s Pizza and Salesforce

Target

Q4 2021 earnings before the bell; conference call at 9 a.m. ET Tuesday
Projected EPS: $2.85
Projected revenue: $31.34 billion

While Target shares jumped 4% Friday, Cramer said it’s hard to know which type of retail story the company will tell when it reports. It’s unclear whether it will say that business is going great, or if it will speak largely about supply chain and inflation challenges, Cramer said.
Kohl’s

Q4 2021 earnings before the open; conference call at 9 a.m. ET Tuesday
Projected EPS: $2.11
Projected sales: $6.59 billion

Predicting Kohl’s quarter is even more difficult than it is for Target, Cramer said, noting the department store chain has been the target of takeover talks.
Domino’s Pizza

Q4 2021 earnings before the bell; conference call at 10 a.m. ET Tuesday
Projected EPS: $4.28
Projected sales: $1.38 billion

Domino’s shares have been hit hard in recent weeks, Cramer said, simply because its performance is seen as consistent, not spectacular. “If Domino’s doesn’t blow the numbers away this time I think investors will decide that it was merely a Covid winner, not a post-Covid winner, even though it has many years of going higher. I disagree. I don’t make the rules, though,” he said.
Salesforce

Q4 2022 earnings after the close; conference call at 5 p.m. ET Tuesday
Projected EPS: 75 cents
Projected sales: $7.25 billion

Cramer said he thinks the “relentless, ruthless selling pressure” on Salesforce’s stock may have finally ended Thursday. “I think the dumping is overdone. I bet it makes the numbers,” said Cramer, whose Charitable Trust owns the enterprise software giant.

Wednesday: Dollar Tree, Powell hearing, Okta and Snowflake

Dollar Tree

Q4 2021 earnings before the bell; conference call at 9 a.m. ET Wednesday
Projected EPS: $1.78
Projected revenue: $7.12 billion

Cramer said he’s not sure why Dollar Tree often is targeted by activist investors. Rather, he said he thinks the stock “is a winner,” particularly because the end of pandemic aid programs means some consumers need to shop at more discount-oriented retailers.
House Committee on Financial Services hearing

Full committee meets at 10 a.m. ET Wednesday for a hearing on “Monetary Policy and the State of the Economy”

Cramer said he’s not expecting Powell to make any major policy announcements during the hearing. The top U.S. central banker also will address the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday.
Okta

Q4 2022 earnings after the close; conference call at 5 p.m. ET Wednesday
Projected loss: Loss of 9 cents per share
Projected revenue: $489 million

Okta is one of the highest-valued stocks in the market, Cramer said, but he explained he’s not sure what to expect from the quarter given there’s been some recent turnover in management roles.
Snowflake

Q4 2022 earnings after the bell; conference call at 5 p.m. ET Wednesday
Projected EPS: 4 cents
Projected revenue: $591 million

Cramer said Snowflake is the high-multiple stock people have remained committed to as the market rotated away from growth-oriented tech. Cramer complimented the data-analytics software firm’s CEO, Frank Slootman, calling him the “newfound king of the cloud.”

Thursday: Kroger, Best Buy and Costco

Kroger

Q4 2021 earnings before the open; conference call at 10 a.m. ET Thursday
Projected EPS: 73 cents
Projected sales: $32.64 billion

The grocery giant will offer a window into the latest on inflation and how U.S. consumers are responding, Cramer said. He said he’s thinking Kroger’s margins may be a little squeezed because its desire to “keep customers happy” could mean the company ate some of the cost increases it’s experiencing.
Best Buy

Q4 2022 earnings before the bell; conference call at 8 a.m. ET Thursday
Projected EPS: $2.77
Projected sales: $16.72 billion

Cramer said he thinks Best Buy’s quarter may be better than its previous report. However, he said he believes there are “better stocks out there” as people spend less time at home than during peak Covid and therefore may no longer want to upgrade their TV to the latest model.
Costco

Q2 2022 earnings after the close; conference call at 5 p.m. ET Thursday
Projected EPS: $2.75
Projected revenue: $51.36 billion

One of his longtime favorite stocks and a part of his Trust portfolio, Cramer said he’s closely watching whether Costco raises the price of its membership and/or issues a special dividend.
“If we don’t get one or both then I think my love could momentarily go unrequited. What an opportunity no matter [what],” he said. “If that one goes down, buy.”

Friday: February jobs report

February nonfarm payrolls

Labor Department releases the latest jobs report at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday

Cramer said he’s looking to see the pace at which average wages are increasing. “If it’s red hot, then Jay Powell will look too dovish if he didn’t take a hard line earlier in the week when he had the chance,” Cramer said.

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Hip-hop entertainer Jim Jones says he has a $1 billion idea — and now he’s seeking investors for his software company, Quarantine Studios.
Jones spoke with CNBC sports business reporter Jabari Young about equity and opportunity for his new metaverse music-recording platform.

During Black History Month, CNBC is promoting equity and opportunity by throwing a spotlight on business ventures like the star rapper’s software enterprise. Watch the video above to learn why Jones believes it will be a game-changer, and how he will pitch the idea to investors. More

Delta said the decision is effective immediately.
Delta’s agreement with Russia’s biggest carrier allowed the airlines’ customers to book seats on one another’s flights.
The move comes after the U.K. banned Aeroflot from flying into the country.

An Aeroflot Russian Airlines Airbus A320 aircraft as seen on final approach flying and landing on the runway at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport with the terminal and the control tower visible, after arriving from Moscow.
Nicolas Economou | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Delta Air Lines said Friday that it is suspending ties with Russian carrier Aeroflot as the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to spread.
Their partnership allows customers to book seats on each other’s flights.

“Delta has withdrawn our codeshare services operated in conjunction with Russian national airline, Aeroflot, effective immediately,” Atlanta-based Delta said in a statement. “We have removed our code from Aeroflot-operated services beyond Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport and removed Aeroflot’s code from Delta-operated services from Los Angeles and New York-JFK. Accommodations will be made for customers affected by these changes.”
The U.K. on Thursday barred state-owned Aeroflot from flying into the country and Russia retaliated by closing its airspace to British carriers. The U.S. Transportation Department didn’t comment on whether it would follow suit. Aeroflot was still scheduled to fly to New York from Moscow on Saturday and has 56 flights scheduled between the U.S. and Russia in March, according to aviation data and consulting firm Cirium.
British airlines and other carriers have been forced to cancel flights or change routings around Russia because of the conflict. Ukraine closed its airspace ahead of Russia’s invasion and European aviation officials warned airlines not to overfly the country or parts of western Russia.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, a Delta partner, told CNBC on Friday that it has canceled some of its Russia service.

“We have decided at this time, given the uncertain situation, not to allow our crew to stay overnight in Russia,” it said in a statement. “Therefore, it is not possible to carry out the night flight to Moscow so we have cancelled it.”

Airlines previously canceled Ukraine service.
Delta does not fly to Russia or Ukraine.
Delta and Aeroflot are members of the SkyTeam airline alliance. “SkyTeam is monitoring ongoing events in Ukraine closely and is in contact with our members to assess the situation as it evolves,” the group said in a statement.
The U.S. Department of Transportation and Aeroflot did not respond to requests for comment.
So-called codeshare agreements allow airlines to sell seats on flights to destinations that their own airline doesn’t serve. Carriers use these agreements often to provide more international reach to customers.

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Danish scientists confirmed this week that the new subvariant can reinfect people who’ve previously had omicron, although it doesn’t appear to be all that common.
They also agree that it’s more contagious than the original version of omicron, BA.1, which is still widely circulating around the world.
But it’s surprisingly not driving a second wave of omicron infections. Globally, Covid cases have plunged 21% over the past week.

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

A more contagious subvariant of omicron, known as BA.2, is spreading across the globe and could soon become the dominant version of Covid-19.
It’s now the top variant in at least 18 countries and rapidly spreading, representing 35% of all new cases that have been genetically sequenced worldwide, up from 10 countries and 21% of cases the week before, according to new data from the World Health Organization. In the U.S, BA.2 currently makes up 3.8% of genetically sequenced Covid cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A pandemic-weary public wants to know two main things: Will BA.2 cause a second surge of omicron cases, and will it put even more people in the hospital with severe infections? So far, scientists say the answer to both questions is probably no.
However, Danish scientists confirmed this week that the new subvariant can reinfect people who’ve previously had omicron, although it doesn’t appear to be all that common. They also agree that it’s more contagious than the original version of omicron, BA.1, which is still widely circulating around the world.

But it’s surprisingly not driving a second wave of omicron infections. Globally, Covid cases have plunged 21% over the past week — subsiding in every region except the Western Pacific — while deaths have fallen 8% over the past week, according to data from the WHO.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, said the global health agency is closely monitoring countries that have detected BA.2, but so far the subvariant hasn’t caused a fresh surge in cases.
“As we’re seeing that decline in cases in countries, we’re not seeing an increase again with BA.2,” Van Kerkhove said during a question-and-answer session livestreamed on the WHO’s social media platforms Tuesday.

Here’s what’s known about the subvariant so far.

More transmissible

Danish researchers have found that BA.2 is about 30% more transmissible than BA.1. Denmark was one of the first countries where BA.2 became dominant, and public health authorities around the world have paid close attention to the situation there to gather insight on what the subvariant might mean for the future course of the pandemic.
“We conclude that Omicron BA.2 is inherently substantially more transmissible than BA.1,” a team of scientists affiliated with Danish public health authorities and the University of Copenhagen wrote in a study last month, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.
The U.K. Health Security Agency found in late January that BA.2 had a substantial advantage over BA.1 in England. “We now know that BA.2 has an increased growth rate which can be seen in all regions in England,” said Dr. Susan Hopkins, the agency’s chief medical advisor.
“If what is being reported is true that BA.2 is slightly more transmissible, then my strong inclination is to say that BA.2 will likely take over wherever BA.1 was,” said Mehul Suthar, a virologist at Emory University.
However, Suthar said this doesn’t necessarily mean that BA.2 will cause a surge of infection. BA.2’s ability to cause another wave depends, in part, on whether it can reinfect people who have already caught and recovered from omicron, he said.

Reinfection possible, but appears rare

Danish scientists confirmed Tuesday that the BA.2 subvariant can reinfect people who previously had its omicron predecessor, BA.1, though the risk of catching the virus again appears low.
The Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen analyzed a randomly selected sample of 263 reinfection cases. Forty-seven people caught BA.2 less than two months after infection with BA.1, according to the study. The majority of the people reinfected with BA.2 after BA.1 were younger than 20 years old and unvaccinated.
“The reinfection rate appears to be low given the high number of positive SARS-CoV-2 tests during the study period but still highlights the need for continuous assessment of length of vaccine-induced and/or natural immunity,” the study’s authors wrote.
The people reinfected had mild symptoms and none of them were hospitalized or died. The study also found that people reinfected with a BA.2 infection had a reduced viral load, indicating some crossover immunity from the first infection.
The U.K. Health Security Agency, in a separate study, found 69 cases of people reinfected with BA.2 no more than 90 days after their first infection with Covid. However, no instances of people reinfected by BA.2 after first catching BA.1 were found among the 51 cases where enough information was available. The timing of the first infections and sequencing indicated their original Covid cases were the delta variant.
Neither study has been peer-reviewed, which is the gold standard in academic publishing. Scientists have been publishing their research as quickly as possible due to the urgency of the pandemic.

CNBC Health & Science

The WHO, in a statement Tuesday, said data from early studies of reinfection cases in the general population shows that one infection with BA.1 provides strong protection against reinfection with BA.2.
“It may be that BA.2 has, from its perspective, the unfortunate scenario of coming into a population that has a lot of preexisting immunity that targets it and that may be part of the reason why we’re not seeing it grow as quickly as the BA.1 omicron,” said Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at John Hopkins University.

Doesn’t appear more severe

A large, real-world study in South Africa that also hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed found that BA.2 causes illness similar to BA.1 omicron, which generally doesn’t make people as sick as the delta variant. In other words, BA.2 generally does not cause more severe disease.
South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases found that 3.6% of people who had BA.2 were hospitalized compared with 3.4% of people who had BA.1. About 30% of the patients hospitalized with BA.2 were severely sick compared with 33% of patients hospitalized with BA.1. The study is based on more than 95,000 people who tested for Covid from December through January.
“BA.2 in terms of clinical severity is behaving very similar to BA.1 with a reduced clinical severity compared to previous variants and specifically the delta,” Cheryl Cohen, one of the study’s authors, told a news conference livestreamed on YouTube earlier this month.
WHO officials have repeatedly said there’s no indication BA.2 is more severe. Cohen said the South Africa data is reassuring, but she also cautioned against drawing conclusions about other countries based on the results.
“We should have caution in extrapolating to other places, particularly to other countries where most of the immunity is from vaccination, in contrast to South Africa where most of the immunity is from natural infection,” Cohen said. “Natural infection could potentially provide a more robust protection against BA.1 and BA.2 than vaccinated.”
At least one study found that mutations on the BA.2 spike protein caused more severe lung infection in hamsters than BA.1. The virus uses the spike to invade cells, and the vaccines target that protein to block infection. The team of Japanese scientists who ran the research said the WHO should consider designating BA.2 a separate variant of concern as a result.
Suthar, the virologist at Emory, urged caution when interpreting the results of the Japanese study because it doesn’t use the real version of BA.2. He said mutations on single component of the virus, such as the spike, don’t necessarily determine whether the virus is more severe.
The study hasn’t been peer-reviewed and one of the scientists said the results may not hold up in the real world since they used an engineered version of BA.2 to test their theory. The team took BA.2’s spike protein, swapped it out and placed it on the original Wuhan virus, according to Takashi Irie, one of the authors on the study. Irie, in an email to CNBC, acknowledged more reports are showing no increase in severity in BA.2 compared with BA.1.
“Therefore, our study’s finding that BA.2 is more pathogenic than BA.1 may not reflect the actual results of the isolated virus,” Irie wrote. However, he said the study’s results do indicate that mutations on the BA.2 spike are capable of causing more severe infection.
A separate study from Japan, which isolated the BA.2 virus from a traveler who arrived in Japan from India, found that the subvariant had a similar level of severity to BA.1 in mice and hamsters. The study has also not been peer-reviewed.
The WHO’s Covid variant advisory group looked at both the South African and Japanese studies, among others, before determining BA.2 should remain classified as omicron rather than designating it a separate variant of concern. This suggests the WHO doesn’t currently view BA.2 as a greater threat to global health than omicron in general.

Vaccines

The original omicron BA.1 strain demonstrated a substantial ability to escape antibodies induced by the vaccines, leading to many breakthrough infections during the recent surge. Danish scientists found that BA.2 is better at evading vaccine protections than BA.1, according to a study published last month.
However, vaccinated people who get breakthrough infections don’t spread the virus as easily to others as the unvaccinated, according to the study. This is likely because people who are vaccinated have a lower viral load than people who have not received their shots, the scientists said. In other words, vaccines still help reduce spread of the virus.
Scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston found that BA.2 evades the antibodies from two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine slightly more than BA.1. Neutralizing antibody levels were about 1.4 times lower against BA.2, according to a study published in early February.
“BA.2 evades antibodies from the Pfizer vaccines similarly to BA.1, maybe slightly more so but not dramatically more so,” said Dan Barouch, an author of the study and principal investigator at Harvard’s Center for Virology and Vaccine Research. Barouch also helped develop Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine.
Barouch said vaccinated people infected with BA.1 also developed robust antibodies against BA.2. “It would suggest that since BA.1 omicron has been very widespread, those people probably have a substantial degree of immunity to BA.2,” he said.
The U.K. Health Security Agency, in a report published Feb. 24, also found the effectiveness of two vaccine doses against symptomatic disease declined to similar levels against BA.1 and BA.2. Booster shots increased protection to 69% against BA.1 and 74% against BA.2 two weeks after the third dose, according to the U.K. study.
Correction: The Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen analyzed a randomly selected sample of 263 reinfection cases. An earlier version misspelled the name of the institute.

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