Dubbed this way by Professor T.Ryan Gregory, one of Omicron’s many sub-variants spreads quite quickly. It combines a certain capacity for immune escape as well as an ease in penetrating our cells.
To navigate this “soup of variants” as he called it, the Canadian professor opted for “Kraken”, a fantastic creature capable of destroying a good number of boats.
Contacted by our colleagues from RTBF, the scientist explains the naming of the XBB.1.5 sub-variant. “The Greek letters used worked well, but it became complicated to communicate with the sub-variants of Omicron, BA.1, BA.2, BA.5… Recently, there has been a wide diffusion of these sub-variants of Omicron. Many of them spread at the same time. It becomes very difficult to explain these technical names.”
We (folks who try to share info about SARS-CoV-2 variant evolution in an accessible way) have been using nicknames for months to help make sense of the “variant soup” (more than 650 PANGO lineages within Omicron). Kraken simply deserved a nickname like the others. pic.twitter.com/IhDfa0C5ah
— T. Ryan Gregory (@TRyanGregory) January 7, 2023
Related to the Omicron variant, the “Kraken” subvariant is a combination of two lineages. “You really have to see the evolution of the virus as a tree that grows”, explains Simon Dellicour. “Omicron is a big branch and in fact the variants that have been circulating for a year now are all new branches emerging from the Omicron branch at the end of 2021”. as Simon Dellicour explains to our colleagues at RTBF.
According to the CDC, the US Centers for Disease Control, “Kraken” now accounts for 28% of Covid-19 cases. And that’s not all, contaminations doubled last week in the USA.
In the northeast of the country, it now covers 75% of cases alone. A month ago, it was only 4%. And since, XBB.1.5. has been detected in 29 countries, indicate our colleagues.