THL: A new sub-variant of the Kraken coronavirus found in Finland | News
Omicron’s XBB.1.5 strain has been detected in Finland, but it is not believed to cause a more serious illness than other variants, THL said on Friday.
Omicron’s so-called sub-variant of the Kraken coronavirus has been found in Finland as expected, the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare (THL) said on Friday.
The XBB.1.5 strain was first detected last fall in the United States and has since spread rapidly. The subvariant now accounts for about 72 percent of cases in the Northeast, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It was expected that the virus variant in question would also be found in Finland before long”, Carita Savolainen-KopraTHL’s chief virology expert said in a press release on Friday.
The XBB.1.5 subvariant is considered to be easily infectious, and like the omicron variants currently circulating in Finland, it effectively evades immune protection, he said.
“However, it is currently not known to cause more severe disease than other omicron variants, and the vaccine’s protection against severe disease has remained excellent regardless of the variants,” Savolainen-Kopra added.
According to the New York Times, XBB.1.5 is a highly mutated subvariant that can apparently better evade immune defenses and invade cells. Some experts call it the most contagious variant to date and expect it to spread rapidly around the world.