New COVID subvariant 'Cicada' is on the rise. Here's what you need to know

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A highly mutated COVID-19 strain is circulating in California — raising concerns that disease activity could rise heading into the summer.The emergence of the BA.3.2 strain, nicknamed “Cicada,” comes amid broader uneasiness about COVID vaccination rates among seniors — who are especially susceptible to the virus — and whether complacency after back-to-back relatively quiet winters has left the elderly vulnerable.

The “Cicada” nickname refers to this subvariant’s apparent dormancy before it reemerged in 2025, akin to some periodically active insects of the same name.The timing of the spread of the Cicada subvariant also underscores that COVID has lately morphed into more of a summer disease in California.

In fact, the summer peaks of COVID in 2024 and 2025 were worse than their respective winter peaks, according to the California Department of Public Health — a stark departure from the earlier years of the pandemic, when winter surges ripped through California with devastating regularity.Instead it was the flu that was the dominant respiratory virus the last two winters, with this past season considered moderately severe.“This Cicada variant may be increasing just in time for what for COVID is more of a summer hit,” said Dr.

Neil Silverman, director of the Infections in Pregnancy Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.“COVID doesn’t seem to play by the same rules that influenza tends to play by, where its cycle is predictable.” Science & Medicine Six years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, doctors are still treating long COVID patients with complex symptoms and unknown futures.Dr.

Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert, said Cicada is “a different kind of variant that’s increasing.It looks so different from the other ones that have been circling since JN.1 came on board” in late 2023.

“My ears are...