The Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5, also known as Kraken, is now the dominant strain among positive Covid-19 tests in South Africa, but experts say it is not unexpected and there is no cause for alarm.
In a social media post, Professor Tulio de Oliveira from the School for Data Science and Computational Thinking at Stellenbosch University, said these observations were based on genomics surveillance in the country, reports News24.
In January, he tweeted that the first case of the XBB.1.5 subvariant had been identified by Stellenbosch University and the Network for Genomics Surveillance in SA.
Professor Anne von Gottberg of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) confirmed that XBB.1.5 was the dominant lineage in the sequences tested in February.
“However, with fewer cases being tested, fewer samples are being sequenced, and data should be interpreted with caution,” she cautioned.
XBB.1.5 had not translated into increased admissions or cases of severe disease, she added, and there had been no sustained increase in the number of cases, while hospitalisations and deaths remain low.
“But as has been shown, as long SARS-CoV-2 is circulating in communities, the possibility of new variants remains.”
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