A new Covid variant that some public health officials have suggested could be linked with conjunctivitis, or pink eye, has set off minor alarms about the virus despite a continual decrease in the number of cases and deaths.
Infectious disease experts, however, say it is part of a normal trajectory for such a virus.
In late April, the Los Angeles county public health department issued an alert stating that people infected with the XBB.1.16 strain, nicknamed “Arcturus” on social media, “could be more likely to experience conjunctivitis as a symptom of their Covid infection”.
The strain is likely more communicable than other recent variants, and people should “take the same sensible Covid precautions to help avoid infection”, the report states.
But the variant should not prompt concerns about a return to earlier stages of the pandemic, according to infectious disease experts.
“It’s like the boy who cried wolf,” said Dr Celine Gounder, an epidemiologist and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News.
“The concern is that if you cry wolf every time there is a new variant – when there is really not cause for heightened level of concern – you are going to lose credibility with the general public.”
The number of Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths has steadily declined since January, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
Life has also continued to gradually return to normal, with most people no longer wearing masks in public spaces.
The Arcturus strain is not a “variant of concern” because “although it’s very contagious, it does not appear to be more severe” than other variants, said William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
The Covid vaccines also appear to protect well against the variant, Schaffner said.
There is also greater immunity against the virus among the general population, which is the “biggest driver of changes in severity and how the virus impacts people”, said Justin Lessler, an epidemiology professor at the University of North Carolina.
The new strain just appears to be part of “an evolving virus”, Lessler said.
“All indications are that we are settling into a flu-like world where the virus continues and continues and continues to evolve and immune escape and that we are going to have repeated epidemics because of that,” Lessler said.
With such a scenario, policymakers and the general public should have a conversation about “how much death we are willing to tolerate” and how much “to spend to prevent death and go from there”, Gounder said.
“That’s a value judgment; that’s not an epidemiological judgment.”
In the meantime, there are still helpful precautions that people can take against the virus, such as vaccines, masking and rapid tests, Lessler said.
“If you are someone, or live with someone, who is particularly high-risk, I think caution is warranted,” Lessler said. “And we still have good tools to help combat it.”
