A new coronavirus variant, considered the most transmissible to date, is ripping through the Northeast and could become dominant in the U.S. within days.
The XBB.1.5 strain is a recombined version of variants that spun off from omicron, the form of the coronavirus that caused havoc last winter.
This winter’s surge of COVID-19 is not as severe as previous ones, but XBB.1.5 is causing hand-wringing among scientists who’ve sized up its speed of transmission.
“It is the most transmissible subvariant that has been detected yet,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 technical lead, told reporters at midweek.