The Ministry of Health (Minsal) announced that the XBB and XBB 1.5 variants, known as “Nightmare” and “Kraken”, from Singapore and the United States, are already in Chile.
As reported by the Minsal, since December 2022 a total of 129 positive cases to XBB and six to XBB 1.5 have been registered, mainly found in travelers and cases in community surveillance. However, most have been asymptomatic and have not caused major problems.
This situation is very contrary to what happened in the United States, one of the countries where the Omicron sub-lineage comes from, where more than 40% of covid-19 cases are due to the highly contagious XBB 1.5, the Centers reported. for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In fact, the epidemiologist of the World Health Organization (WHO), Maria Van Kerkhove, indicated that “it is the most transmissible subvariant of Omicron to date.”
“We expect more waves of infections around the world, although that does not have to translate into more waves of death, because our countermeasures continue to work,” Van Kerkhove closed.
