You can call it ‘The Kraken’, and everything else you need to know about the new COVID variant

In today’s Big Story podcast, stop us if you’ve heard this one before: It’s more contagious, we’re seeing it make up a higher percentage of cases, hospitalizations are beginning to climb, and we don’t yet know if it’s more severe or not. Playing the role of Omicron in this winter’s version of a January spike is sub-variant XBB 1.5, otherwise known as The Kraken.

So should you be worried? Will vaccines still protect us? How will we know if it’s time to be concerned? What should we be doing now to make sure we can have a safe winter? And should we just prepare for this to be our seasonal situation for the next few years, as the virus moves towards real endemicity?

Dr. Raywat Deonandan, Global Health Epidemiologist, and Associate Professor with the Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences at The University of Ottawa joins today’s The Big Story.

“So far we found it in about 30 countries, including Canada. About 70 per cent of the new cases in the Northeast USA, if not more, are caused by this. So the growth advantage it has is significant over other variants,” said Deonandan.

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You can also find it at thebigstorypodcast.ca.