NEW YORK — Thought COVID was done with surprises? Not yet, apparently.
Those red, itchy eyes you assumed were just the start of allergy season? It might as well be something called “Arcturus” instead.
XBB.1.16, a subvariant of the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus that has acquired that unusual stellar tag, appears to be spreading rapidly in some parts of the world.
For now, the worst seems to be in India, where the local media reported Friday that daily cases are rising, nearly 50% in recent days.
But it is also growing in the United States. He CDC variant trackerupdated on Friday, shows that XBB.1.16 has nearly doubled its proportion in the last week and is now at 7.2% of all sequenced samples, although it can reach 11.3%.
In HHS Region 2, which includes New York and New Jersey, that number is now over 9%. The CDC estimates that its prevalence could reach 14.9%.
CDC
What’s notable about Arcturus so far, aside from being highly contagious, is the appearance of a possible new symptom. Until now, it has been seen mainly in children.
Indian pediatrician Vipin M. Vashishtha, a member of the Vaccine Safety Net program of the World Health Organization, tweeted last week that there is an increase in cases of “itchy conjunctivitis with sticky eyes” that may be associated with the subvariant.
He director of the Laboratory of Clinical Virology at the Mayo Clinic also reported Thursday that experts are seeing an increase in red, itchy eyes in younger patients with this new strain, a symptom not yet seen during the three years of the pandemic.
To the options does not yet appear in city health department monitoring reports, although the page has not been updated since the beginning of this month. A week ago, it wasn’t a problem on the CDC’s variant tracker for the region either, nor does New York State surveillance reflect the incidence rate which is now reported by the federal agency for infectious diseases.
Right now, transmission in New York City is the lowest it has been in many months, though that trend reflects a dramatic drop in the number of people getting tested. The hospitalization and mortality rates they have also steadily declined.
NYC
