The Omicron coronavirus variant may be reaching around the world, but different places are seeing significantly different effects.
In the United States, COVID-19 case numbers have been falling since January. They may have hit a plateau as a subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, becomes the main cause of infections.
But in China, an area of the world that has had few spikes during the pandemic, there has been a dramatic increase in cases as BA.2 rips through the country.
The difference, experts say, is part policy and part population-level immunity. What's happening in China doesn't necessarily mean the US is in for another huge spike in cases. "Public health is very much a local thing," said Andy Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. With the first Covid-19 cases in 2020, he said, trends were similar around the globe because most people's bodies had no experience with the coronavirus, and there were no vaccines. They had no protection against it.