A highly mutated COVID-19 strain is circulating in California — raising concerns that disease activity could rise heading into the summer. The emergence of the BA.3.2 strain, nicknamed “Cicada,” comes amid broader uneasiness about COVID vaccination rates among seniors — who are especially susceptible to the virus — and whether complacency after back-to-back relatively quiet winters has left the elderly vulnerable. The “Cicada” nickname refers to this subvariant’s apparent dormancy before it reemerged in 2025, akin to some periodically active insects of the same name. The timing of the spread of the Cicada subvariant also underscores that COVID has lately morphed into more of a summer disease in California. In fact, the summer peaks of COVID in 2024 and 2025 were worse than their respective winter peaks, according to the California Department of Public Health — a stark departure from the earlier years of the pandemic, when winter surges ripped through California with devastating regularity. Instead it was the flu that was the dominant respiratory virus the last two winters, with this past season considered …