Covid: Expert says ‘we need public inquiry’
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The ‘“Kraken” strain is on a rampage through the UK amid a 50 percent surge in Covid cases over the last 10 days. The sublineage of Omicron -XBB1.5 – accounted for 11 percent of Covid cases on January 16, doubling its presence in Britain in the first two weeks of January. That is according to data from the GISAID. It comes after the variant, dubbed the “Kraken” strain, started spreading at alarming rates in the US.
In fact, cases of the virus across the Atlantic surged from 12 percent to 42 percent in just three weeks. Experts say that a new strain is likely to be more contagious when it spreads faster, meaning the Kraken variant may threaten to spark a fresh wave of the virus this winter.
Previously speaking to Express.co.uk, Dr Stephen Griffin, an Associate Professor at the Leeds Institute of Medical Research, explained: “The strain is not only better at infecting per se, it is better at evading our defences when doing so. This gives it a big advantage over its predecessors (mainly BQ1.1), as we are seeing in the US and now here.
“This could mean that we see a more rapid expansion of yet another wave of infection compared to what we would have otherwise had, as there may be many more people that are more susceptible to infection with this virus – much like we have seen with influenza.
“More infections will necessarily lead to more severe disease, as well as adding to the dreadful toll of long COVID, which can happen following even a mild disease course.
“Whether this virus is also inherently more virulent on a case by case basis remains to be seen, and can be difficult to immediately tease out in highly vaccinated populations like the US and the UK.”
This comes after initial hopes that there would be a period of lower infection levels and suspicions that XBB.1.5 may not have been spreading as fast as had originally been feared.
Only nine days ago, daily symptomatic cases had plunged below 100,000.
But the latest figures from the ZOE Health Study have revealed that cases have risen by 45 percent to 123,265 on Saturday.
Professor Danny Altmann, of Imperial College London, is concerned that the Kraken variant is responsible for the latest surge.
He said: “I’m concerned that with XBB.1.5 we have another increment in transmissibility and immune evasiveness, and our complacent reliance on established immunity may be misplaced. We continue to be in uncharted territory.”
Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, said: “We can expect fluctuations in Covid infections from the circulation of more infectious variants such as XBB.1.5. There is also the impact of waning immunity, particularly as only 64.5 percent of those aged 50 and over have received the autumn booster.”
The variant is a mutated version of Omicron XBB, which was detected in Singapore, India and 33 other nations back in October, according to the World Health Service.
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Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organisation’s technical lead on COVID-19, warned on January 4 the XBB.1.5 is the “most transmissible subvariant detected yet”.
She added: “The reasons for this are the mutations that are within this subvariant of Omicron allowing this virus to adhere to the cell and replicate easily.”
Dr Meera Chand, director of clinical and emerging infections at the UK Health and Security Agency, has previously said: “Through our genomic surveillance we continue to see the evolution of variants in the Omicron family. UKHSA is constantly monitoring the situation and working to understand the implications for public health.
“Vaccination remains our best defence against future COVID-19 waves, so it is still as important as ever that people take up all the doses for which they are eligible as soon as possible.”
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