Is it safe to travel while omicron BA.5 spreads?

Summer travel is booming, and while most pandemic-era restrictions in airports are gone, the coronavirus has more surprises in store.

BA.5, the latest subvariant of omicron, is spreading rapidly, becoming the dominant variant in the United States and creating a wave of covid-19 cases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting an average of more than 120,000 new cases a day in the United States, and that does not include the massive estimates of people who are not reporting results from home tests. Hospitalizations in the United States have increased 10 percent over the past week, according to tracking data from The Washington Post.