The European Union Agency for Disease Control has good news and bad news when it comes to XBB.1.5, the sub-variant of the coronavirus nicknamed the "kraken" that is sweeping America and keeping epidemiologists up at night.
The bad news is that XBB.1.5 is spreading rapidly, most likely because it has some major advantages over the currently dominant omicron strains, and the good news is that Europe has time to prepare if and when the number of infections starts to rise, it says N1.
"There is a possibility that this variant could have an increasing effect on the number of covid-19 patients in the EU/EEA, but not in the coming month, as the variant is currently present only at very low levels," writes the European Center for Prevention and Control diseases (ECDC) in its assessment.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization's (WHO) technical director for Covid-19, Maria Van Kerkhove, said the health agency was concerned about the speed at which this sub-variant was replacing other variants. In the US, it went from four percent of sequenced cases to 40 percent in a few weeks, according to the White House's covid response coordinator. However, it is not yet known whether it can cause a more severe infection.
What is known?
The ECDC writes that the accelerated pace of spread is likely due to the subvariant's ability to evade immune system protection provided by previous infections or vaccination. It also has a mutation in its 'spike' protein – the part of the virus that binds to host cells – which could provide some advantage, writes Politiko.
This subvariant is so far only a "blip on the radar in Europe" in terms of case numbers, the ECDC said, although it has been detected in Denmark, France, Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Iceland, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Ireland. Data coming out of the US suggests that XBB.1.5 is spreading aggressively, with cases doubling every nine days.
The danger is that the explosion of cases coincides with an already difficult flu and respiratory syncytial virus season, putting a strain on hospitals. In Belgium, public health authorities have declared a flu epidemic due to a surge in cases, with a peak expected in three to four weeks.
However, just because this subvariant has caused an explosion of cases in the US, does not mean that such a scenario will occur in Europe.
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