Arcturus, New COVID Variant Has A Never Seen Before Symptom

OB Bureau

April 14, 2023 11:22 am

New Delhi: The World Health Organisation (WHO) is keeping a close eye on the new subvariant of COVID, XBB.1.16, which is also called Arcturus. The cases linked to this new Covid subvariant are also rising in other countries such as the US, Australia and Singapore.

According to a report in the Times of India, COVID cases in kids aged under 12 have rapidly increased.

Arcturus is a subvariant combination of the other two subvariants of the Omircon variant. In late March, the WHO declared the virus a “variant under monitoring,” adding that it is the most transmissible variant of COVID-19 yet.

As per reports, Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID technical lead from the WHO called the Covid variant “one to watch”. Dr Vipin M Vashishtha, a paediatrician and former head of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Immunisation took to Twitter to throw light on the variant and rising cases of COVID in the world. He also listed out symptoms of COVID’s new subvariant, Arcturus. According to the doctor, symptoms include high fever, cough and another symptom that was not s seen with the previous COVID variants – itchy conjunctivitis or pinkeye, the report added.

Richard Reithinger, an infectious disease epidemiologist at RTI International said that it was too e early to tell if the virus’ symptoms have shifted and whether conjunctivitis has previously been reported as a COVID symptom. The current rise in COVID cases is being driven by XBB.1.16, which is a sub-variant of Omicron.

According to several other reports, while Omicron and its sub-lineages continue to be the dominant variant, most of the assigned variants have little or no significant transmissibility, disease severity or immune escape. The prevalence of XBB.1.16 increased from 21.6 per cent in February this year to 35.8 per cent in March.