What should you know about the COVID cicada variant?

Karl Hille, Baltimore Sun on Apr 6, 2026

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A new variant of COVID-19, dubbed cicada, is less susceptible to vaccination and appears to discriminate based on age, scientists say. The variant appears less threatening to older individuals, preferring young people instead.

Cicada, formally named BA.3.2, is a mutation of the omicron COVID-19 branch that first appeared in 2021. It has been spotted in 23 countries and in wastewater from 25 American states, according to reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The 2025-2026 COVID-19 vaccine provides the least protection against cicada, and while infections in the United States are currently very low, reductions in testing may mask its true prevalence. On the other hand, reports show that cicada’s severity is also fairly mild, compared with other strains.

In Maryland, with the winter flu season waning, hospitalizations dropped from a seasonal peak of 1,442 in early January to 133 for the week ending March 28 for COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus or RSV. According to the Maryland Respiratory Illness Dashboard, 20 state residents died of COVID in March, compared with five from flu and one from RSV. Deaths topped 40 in the state for each of December, January and February.

Kids are five times more likely to be infected by the cicada variant than other versions of the virus, data shows. Amateur COVID-19 tracker Ryan Hisner, a schoolteacher from Indiana, said youths18 and under are five times as likely to get cicada, making up 63.4% of Cicada cases, compared with 11.9% of all other strains.

Hisner publishes his data on X and X-substitute site, XCancel, and has gained respect from researchers like Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary virologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. Hisner is the first source he looks at each day for new information about the disease, Bloom said in a release about cicada from the University of Nebraska Medical Center news webpage

“Ryan has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the virus,” Bloom states. “It’s refreshing to see someone who is so up to speed on the literature — more so than any other ‘professional’ I’ve ever met.”

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