Health Service Area (HHS) Region 4 contains Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
Note: Variants making up less than 5% of the weekly totals are combined into Other.
Sources: Atrium Health Charlotte, as of Fri Jul 12, 2024; and CDC (HHS Region 4 & USA data, SARS-CoV-2 Variant Proportions), as of Fri Oct 25, 2024.
Viruses like SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19, will continue to mutate as it circulates in a given population. Variant dynamics can change based on local disease transmission rates and travel patterns.
Currently, the predominant circulating strains of SARS-CoV-2 are sub-lineages of the Omicron variant (parent lineage BA.1), which first emerged in November 2021. In general, the Omicron variant spreads more quickly and causes less severe disease than previously predominating variants, such as the Delta variant, but surges in cases can still result in a significant increase in hospitalizations and deaths. SARS-CoV-2 lineages are given an alphanumeric name according to the Pango lineage system.
To learn more about how lineages are named, visit cov-lineages.org.
See the CDC’s Variant & Genomic Serveillance page to learn more about how CDC is using genomic surveillane to track SARS-CoV-2 Variants.