{"id":11832,"date":"2026-04-08T19:33:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T00:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11832"},"modified":"2026-04-08T21:04:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T02:04:51","slug":"us-cases-of-covid-variant-cicada-up-more-than-15-and-rising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/04\/08\/us-cases-of-covid-variant-cicada-up-more-than-15-and-rising\/","title":{"rendered":"US cases of COVID variant &#8216;Cicada&#8217; up more than 15% and rising"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/health\/2026\/04\/08\/covid-variant-cicada-ba-3-2-us-cases-increase\/89522582007\/\">USA Today<\/a> A new,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/health\/2026\/03\/30\/cicada-covid-variant-symptoms\/89387409007\/\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"highly mutated COVID strain, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&#8220;highly mutated&#8221; COVID strain<\/a>&nbsp;is quickly gaining ground in the United States, according to new data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Variant BA.3.2, nicknamed &#8220;Cicada,&#8221;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/health\/2026\/03\/25\/covid-19-variant-cicada-spreading\/89317059007\/\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"first drew the attention of health officials, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">first drew the attention of health officials<\/a>&nbsp;earlier this year when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization noted it had appeared in at least 23 countries and accounted for up to 30% of cases in some Eastern European locales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The United States may be following suit, according to new wastewater data. While Cicada accounted for a very small number of U.S. cases (less than 4%) when the CDC\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/health\/2026\/03\/25\/covid-19-variant-cicada-spreading\/89317059007\/\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"first released a report in mid-March, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">first released a report in mid-March<\/a>, information gathered by WasteWaterSCAN, a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.stanford.edu\/stories\/2023\/10\/stanford-led-wastewaterscan-project-adds-six-new-disease-targets\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Stanford University-led, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Stanford University-led<\/a>\u00a0tool for tracking the spread of disease, found that it now accounts for more than 20% of tested COVID infections as of early April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/health\/2026\/04\/08\/covid-variant-cicada-ba-3-2-us-cases-increase\/89522582007\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\"AVnbkvbc Qf\"><!-- AVnbkvbc Qf --><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>USA Today A new,&nbsp;&#8220;highly mutated&#8221; COVID strain&nbsp;is quickly gaining ground in the United States, according to new data. Variant BA.3.2, nicknamed &#8220;Cicada,&#8221;&nbsp;first drew the attention of health officials&nbsp;earlier this year when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization noted it had appeared in at least 23 countries and accounted for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid","category-featured-headlines"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11833,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11832\/revisions\/11833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}