New "Arcturus" COVID-19 Strain Surging in India: Here We Go Again?

 

Welp, there's a newer, worser COVID-19 strain in the wild, y'all. I've been wondering why it's been so long since we've seen news of a threatening new variant. 

They are calling this one "Arcturus." The name, according to Wikipedia, means "guardian of the bear." That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but then again I'm not a Greek mythology nerd. 

Anyway, this variant is another of the Sons of Omicron. It descended from XBB, and has the designation XBB.1.16. 

Another such descendant, XBB.1.5, is currently the king of the hill in Arizona, according to Lim Lab. XBB and its descendants are dominant nationwide, according to BioBot.

According to The Independent, Arcturus was first detected in January. It is now spreading in like wildfire in India. 

Like all the Sons of Omicron, this variant is "the most contagious yet," but has relatively low disease severity. One point of concern is that officials believe an "infantile prototype" is emerging with conjunctivitis (pink eye) being a symptom not seen before.

If you want more things to worry about, have a look at this guy's twitter feed. In particular he mentions is a new variant XBC.1.6 that a recombinant of Delta and Omicron. 

Delta was the last variant we faced that had high pathogenicity. It was responsible for the big surge we experienced at the beginning of last year.

Just when we thought things were calming down...more fun on the horizon!



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