United States, January 15.- Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is spreading rapidly in the United States, accounting for 43 percent of reported Covid-19 cases. according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This strain is currently the most transmissible variant in the country and forms the 30.4 percent of all diagnoses for the week ended January 7tha 20 percent increase from the previous seven days, the source added.
Regarding the situation, White House SARS-CoV-2 Operations Coordinator Ashish Jha warned of the possibility that The American health care system cannot cope with the continuous increase in patient numbers while attending to other medical emergencies.
“I worry that we’re going to have a pretty dysfunctional healthcare system for years without being able to care for heart attack patients or cancer patients and without being able to help children with appendicitis because we’re going to be very overwhelmed with respiratory viruses for three or four months a year,” he said, quoted by the Washington Post.
The World Health Organization announced this earlier this week XBB.1.5 may stimulate more Covid-19 cases based on genetic traits and initial growth rate estimates.
The subvariant was first spotted in New York and Connecticut, United States, in late October, according to Gisaid, an international organization that aims to track and sequence variants of the coronavirus.
(Cubadebate/With information from Prensa Latina)
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