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The BA.5 variant (the official name for Omicron) made up about 65 percent of US cases in the weeklong period ending Saturday, July 16, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
And the wave is being felt nationwide.
The Staten Island Ferry has reduced service due to an increasing number of workers being out sick.
In Boston, with cases up around 40 percent in a week, officials are recommending mask-wearing in crowded indoor settings.
In California, transmission levels have been consistently high across virtually all California counties, the CDC reports, with Los Angeles seeing a 14-percent week-over-week increase.
"This is a version of the virus that can escape any of the immunity you had from an infection previously as well as from a vaccine," NBC News Medical Contributor Dr. Kavita Patel said of the BA.5 strain. "It poses a risk for the majority of the population because infections in the past don't protect you.
"We're seeing more reinfections the last 30 to 60 days."
A new mutation of the Omicron strain -- identified as BA.2.75 -- is being described as perhaps the most contagious yet, with little hope for immunity.
But so far, only a handful of BA.2.75 cases have been confirmed in the US. It's been identified in 11 countries, including India, where it has quickly been gaining traction.
- Earlier report - COVID-19: New Wave With 'Worst Version' Of Omicron Starting, Leading NY Doctor Says
BA.2.75 "may be able to spread rapidly and get around immunity from vaccines and previous infection," according to scientists cited in a report in TIME Magazine.
“It’s still really early on for us to draw too many conclusions,” Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester in Minnesota, told TIME. “But it does look like, especially in India, the rates of transmission are showing kind of that exponential increase.”
The first Omicron wave happened in November 2021, marking when the United States went from being relatively strong at treating COVID cases resulting from the pre-Omicron variants to being relatively bad with the arrival of Omicron.
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