[LINK] Covid: England to require negative test (before boarding) for arrivals from China

[Stephen Loosley]

>> So logically, what should we do .. opinion?
>
> Ask an epidemiologist. Which is presumably what the Australian Government did ..


“New Omicron Super Variant XBB.1.5 Detected In India”

By India.com News Desk: December 31, 2022 3:34 PM IST

Amid the COVID spurt in countries, concern regarding new mutations and variants is constant.

While the BF.7, subvariant of Omicron is said to drive the surge in China, and has been detected in India too, another variant is also here.

Today India also logged the first case of super variant XBB.1.5 in Gujarat.

As per the data from US Centre of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed that over 40% of cases in United States are now caused due to this variant.

“Ironically, probably the worst variant that the world is facing right now is actually XBB,” Dr Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, told Reuters.

All About XBB.1.5 Variant



  *   XBB.1.5 is a new recombinant strain and is both more immune-evasive and better at infecting than BQ.1 and XBB, the virologist said.



  *   He added that it is not ‘typical Omicron’, but a special recombination mixture variant that is further mutated.


  *   XBB was first identified in India in August. It quickly become dominant there, as well as in Singapore. It has since evolved into a family of subvariants including XBB.1 and XBB.1.5.


  *   Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University, said that COVID XBB.1.5 is different from its family members because it has an additional mutation that makes it bind better to cells, reports India Today.


  *   “The virus needs to bind tightly to cells to be more efficient at getting in and that could help the virus be more efficient at infecting people,” Pekosz said.


  *   Scientists at Columbia University have warned that the rise of subvariants such as XBB could “further compromise the efficacy of current Covid vaccines and result in a surge of breakthrough infections as well as re-infections.”


  *   The scientists described the resistance of the XBB subvariants to antibodies from vaccination and infection as “alarming.”



  *   The XBB subvariants were even more effective at dodging protection from the omicron boosters than the BQ subvariants.


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