Covid-19 in 2023: All of the signs and symptoms of the…

Covid-19 in 2023: All of the signs and symptoms of the new XBB.1.5 variant

Covid is back on the agenda following China's decision to lift lockdowns and open its borders.

The UK, US and India have all announced their imposing testing requirements on arrivals from the world's most populous country, which has 1.4bn residents.

The Liverpool Echo reports how the NHS has been struggling with a rise in hospital patients with Covid. Infections in the UK leapt to a six-month high after Christmas.

According to the Office for National Statistics, one in 20 people are likely to have had the virus over the festive period. Transport Secretary Mark Harper said arrivals from China who test positive won't be required to isolate and tests were for "collecting that information for surveillance purposes".

The increased transmission of coronavirus in the world's most populous country presents new opportunities for the virus to mutate and new variants to emerge. What form a new variant could take is uncertain, but scientists already have their eyes on strains emerging elsewhere in the world.

A new Covid-19 variant accounts for more than 40% of cases in the US. Cases there have more than doubled in a week and epidemiology professor Tim Spector has described it as the one "to watch out for" this year.

First detected in India, the sub-variant known as XBB.1.5 is a mutated version of Omicron, the most contagious variant. Omicron has become the globally dominant strain since it emerged in late 2021

The cold-like symptoms are largely the same as Omicron, and, according to the NHS, can include:

a high temperature or shivering (chills) – a high temperature means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature)
a new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or three or more coughing episodes in 24 hours
a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste
shortness of breath
feeling tired or exhausted
an aching body
a headache
a sore throat
a blocked or runny nose
loss of appetite
diarrhoea
feeling sick or being sick

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said its seen no indication XBB.1.5 is more severe than other strains, but it is concerned by how transmissible it could be, Reuters reports. Mutations happen bit by bit, so major changes in a new variant are unlikely.

What XBB.1.5 appears to have is an ability to bind to cells while evading the body's immune defences, which makes it spread more easily, according to Professor Wendy Barclay from Imperial College London. It already accounts for roughly one in 25 Covid cases in the UK, the BBC reports.

The WHO's senior epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said: "We do expect further waves of infection around the world, but that doesn't have to translate into further waves of death because our countermeasures (vaccines and treatment) continue to work."

This rings true in the UK where, despite excess deaths surpassing the five-year average, the Covid death rate remains low due to 64% of people over 50 being vaccinated. Official guidance in the UK remains the same, with the NHS advising people to "try to stay at home and avoid contact with other people for 5 days" and to avoid "meeting people at higher risk from Covid-19 for 10 days" if they test positive for the virus.

With kids returning to schools after the Christmas break, the UK Health Security Agency advised people to practice familiar hygiene measures like regularly washing hands in soap and warm water for 20 seconds or with hand sanitiser, catching coughs and sneezes, as well as getting vaccinated and keeping kids home if they're unwell.

Professor Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, has urged people to be calm. He said: "There is no reason to think that XBB.1.5 is of any more concern than other variants that come and go in the ever-changing landscape of Covid-19 mutants."

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