When governments have relaxed their measures against the COVID-19 and the population has said goodbye to the masks and has put their booster doses of the vaccine on hold, some sub-variants have been advancing that have been baptized as “Dog from hell” and that could be the cause of the next pandemic wave.
These are the subvariants of omicron BQ.1 and BQ.1.1. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported in October 2022 that the BQ.1.1 sublineage had been found in patients from at least 29 countries.
The Spanish Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, assures that the BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 subvariants of ómicron will be the majority at the end of November or beginning of December. At the moment, they only represent 2.7% of the cases, with BA.4 and BA.5 still being the dominant ones. However, its ease of contagion is what worries her.
WHY ARE THE NEW OMICRON SUBVARIANTS CALLED “HELL DOG”?
The new subvariants of ómicron, BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, have been baptized in social networks as “dog from hell”, in allusion to Cerberus, the dog of the god Hades in Greek mythologywho was in charge of guarding the gates of the underworld.
The mission of the diabolical animal was to guard the gates of hell, located at the end of the journey through the Styx lagoon in Charon’s boat. For nine years now, Cerberus and Styx have also lent their names to two of Pluto’s moons, the latest discovered to date on the dwarf planet in our Solar System.
WHAT IS THE DANGER OF “HELL’S DOG”?
The danger of the “hound from hell” is its rapid propagation capacity and that would be the cause of a new wave both in Europe and in North America.
- It has fast propagation capacity.
- According to the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention, its prevalence and rate will exceed 50% of infections in less than a month.
- Its mutations have an enormous degree of immunological evasion, but it does not cover more serious cases.
- There is a fairly high probability that it was 10% more contagious, according to Cornelius Roemer, a researcher at the University of Basel.
WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF “DOG FROM HELL”?
Next, the symptomatology of the variant:
- Throat pain
- Fatigue
- Cough
- General discomfort
- Aphonia
- Diarrhea
- Runny nose
- Headache
- He drowned
- Loss of smell and taste
- loss of appetite
- sneezing
- Unusual elevation of heart rate
- Aphonia
