The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) warned on Friday that the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 might overtake other strains as a dominant one in Europe in the coming months. This comes just a few days after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that the percentage of COVID-19 infections brought on by XBB.1.5 in December rose from 4% to 41%.
The subvariant is also responsible for approximately 75% of new infections in the northeastern US, according to statistics from the CDC.
The XBB.1.5 Omicron subvariant, which some scientists have informally termed ‘Kraken,’ is another branch of XBB that was discovered for the first time in the US last year in October and has lately been deemed the most transmissible variant.
According to Grace Roberts, a virologist at the University of Leeds in Britain, an additional mutation to its spike protein is what makes the subvariant different from its otherwise very similar predecessor XBB.1. Notably, this additional spike protein is the key that allows the virus into the body’s cells.
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