Omicron offshoot XBB.1.5 could drive new Covid-19 surge in US

Omicron offshoot XBB.1.5 could drive new Covid-19 surge in US | CNN The CDC estimates that XBB.1.5 has more than doubled its share of the Covid-19 pie each week for the last four, rising from about 4% to 41% of new infections over the month of December. Brenda Goodman CNN

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Virologists and epidemiologists say this Omicron sublineage has features that give it the potential to drive a new surge of Covid-19 cases in the US, although it’s still unclear how large that wave will be and whether it could send many more people to the hospital.

For all the recent concern that a new Covid-19 threat could come from China’s ongoing surge, experts point out that XBB.1.5 appears to have arisen in the United States. It was first detected in New York and Connecticut in late October, according to GISAID, a global effort to catalog and track variants of the coronavirus. ...