A new Covid-19 variant called Arcturus is rapidly spreading around the world and health officials have warned it has new symptoms not seen in previous strains.
Arcturus is a subvariant of Omicron which seems to be more transmissible, having fuelled a recent surge of Covid cases in India, the Mirror reports.
In the UK, levels have so far remained low, but health officials are keeping a close eye on it. This latest variant reportedly also comes with a new symptom, not seen before with a coronavirus strain.
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Reports from doctors in India have said they are seeing more children and adolescents with the variant presenting with conjunctivitis - or pink eye.
Indian paediatrician Vipn M. Vashishtha, also a member of the WHO's Vaccine Safety Net programme, said youngsters were presenting with a high fever, cold and cough, and "itchy conjunctivitis" with "sticky eyes".
However, Dr Michael Chang, a paediatric infections diseases expert at UTHealth Houston and Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital, told Yagoo News there isn't enough evidence to prove the new Covid variant is causing conjunctivitis.
"We don't have the context of whether they're seeing that in some of the regions in India," he said.
"We know their Covid cases are going up, and presumably, these kids are testing positive for Covid, but we don't know if they're testing positive for anything else either."
Experts also say that the strain causes "more fever" compared to other variants.
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, said: "It tends to produce more fever than some of the other strains we've seen.
He continued: "But the most distinctive feature is that it seems to have a tendency to produce conjunctivitis, particularly in children."
Despite sometimes causing a worse fever, the strain doesn't cause more severe cases. Existing vaccines work on Omicron also appear to work well against Acturus, which is also known as XBB.1.16.
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