Kingston-area health officials keep tabs on new COVID-19 variant
Global News
The new omicron subvariant, nicknamed 'The Kraken, is making its way through the united states. The good news is, it hasn't made much of a dent in Ontario yet.
The new Omicron subvariant, nicknamed “The Kraken,” is making its way through the United States. It hasn’t made much of a dent in Ontario yet, but there is a chance it could come north of the border.
“We are not seeing it in the Kingston community yet,” said Stephen Brown, KFL&A Public Health’s co-director of the Wastewater Surveillance Initiative Group.
So the good news on the COVID front in the Kingston region is that the new Omicron subvariant XBB1.5 hasn’t made it here yet.
Brown, a researcher with Queen’s University, is on the team monitoring Kingston’s Wastewater for traces of COVID.
“There’s not much of it in Ontario yet,” Brown said. “I think there have been a few cases identified. But the trend has been, once it gets into a community, it’s more infectious than the other subvariants, and it tends to take over.”
The current dominant strain in Kingston is BQ1, which is a spinoff of the BA.5 Omicron variant.
Even though XBB is sweeping through the U.S., making up nearly half of all COVID cases, KFL&A Public Health isn’t worried about it at this point.
“Through our surveillance, we know that this XBB1.5 does not appear to be increasing in a worrisome pattern,” said Dr. Piotr Oglazam chief medical officer of health.