It hasn’t been a full week since Biden officially ended the federal government’s covid emergency order, yet new reports are coming out that the World Health Organization (WHO) has its eye on a new Omicron variant more infectious than “Kraken.”
A new COVID-19 variant is causing concern in India — and it may be 1.2 times more infectious than the Kraken variant.The new strain, dubbed Arcturus, has increased 13-fold in the last month in the country.Arcturus — technically the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.16 — caused India’s health ministry to launch mock drills in order to see if hospitals are properly prepared to handle a potential influx of COVID patients.Arcturus — one of more than 600 Omicron subvariants — was first detected in January. It’s being monitored by the World Health Organization, with some officials noting it had some mutations of concern.The variant has been detected in other countries as well, but most of the cases were in India, where it took over other variants.
It’s been circulating in the U.S. for the past several months.
Health chiefs first detected ‘Arcturus’, a highly infectious spin-off of Omicron, in New York in late January. But it has since spread to 26 more states and triggered 235 cases, with hotspots emerging in California, New Jersey and Virginia….California is the hotspot for the new variant in the United States, with 54 sequences recorded to date.What is ‘Arcturus’ and should we be worried?Rounding out the top five are New Jersey, 38 cases, Virginia (25) Texas (23) and New York (21).The other states where the strain has been detected are: Washington, Illinois, Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Utah, Ohio, Minnesota, Maryland, North Carolina, Nevada, Iowa, Indiana, Hawaii, Delaware, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts, Louisiana and Colorado.
Arcturus has a new symptom that has not been prevalent in previous covid variants: Pink eye.
But XBB.1.16 may not be just another run-of-the-mill Omicron. Dr. Vipin Vashishtha—a pediatrician in India and former head of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Immunization—tweeted Thursday that pediatric cases of COVID are on the increase for the first time in six months, and that “an infantile phenotype seems emerging.”The symptoms he’s now seeing among children:
- High fever
- Cough
- “Itchy” conjunctivitis—or pink eye—without pus, but with “sticky eyes”
The latter symptom hasn’t been seen in earlier COVID waves, he noted.
For those of you interested, the new variants are being named for mythological entities.
Like similar new Covid variants, virus trackers online decided to call XBB.1.16 ‘Arcturus’ following a pattern of naming new strains after mythological entities.Arcturus means ‘Guardian of the Bear’ and is related to the constellation called the Great Bear.
I wonder how many of the world mythologies the experts are going to go through before they tire of tracking the subvariants? Until then, here’s hoping the trajectory of increasingly more mild infections continue.
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