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DENVER (KDVR) — New data released from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment indicates the BA.5 subvariant of COVID-19 accounts for the majority of cases in the state.

The subvariant of omicron already established a strong foothold in Colorado by mid-June. Newly released data shows BA.5 accounted for roughly 64% of all COVID cases in Colorado for the week of June 26, but there are some caveats.

A footnote on the CDPHE data page indicates the data for that week comes from “a limited number of specimens and are subject to change.” CDPHE is striking a balance between making the data publicly available and how complete the data sets are.

Courtesy: CDPHE

The BA.4 subvariant made up nearly 11% of total cases for the same week. While the two new subvariants are better at evading prior immunity, they’re not any better at evading testing. At-home tests and lab tests are just as good at detecting BA.4 and BA.5 as past variants.

Regardless of the sample size, the trend is something we have routinely seen as variants become more and more contagious and box out other variants. BA.4 and BA.5, have become incredibly evasive to the body’s immune response, as people getting infected for the second time becomes more common.