One in 10 Americans who contract Covid is now infected with the new strain Arcturus, data shows.
DailyMail.com understands that some patients who contracted the XBB.1.16 strain – an offshoot of Omicron – have died, although US health officials do not directly monitor variant-specific deaths.
Arcturus, believed to be the most contagious and vaccine-resistant version of the virus to date, has already spread to 31 states, with California, New Jersey and New York being hot spots.
There is no evidence that the new variant causes a more serious illness, but doctors in India claim it causes a new and unusual symptom: itchy eyes.
The map above shows the number of Arcturus cases reported by state. California, New Jersey and New York are the hotspots for the disease
The mutated strain has officially been detected 446 times in the US, although the actual number will be much higher as only a fraction of positive smears are analyzed for variants.
A health source suggested on this website that the virus was so widespread that it would undoubtedly kill patients already.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated it was behind 9.6 percent of all cases as of April 22.
This was up 50 percent from a week ago, when models suggested it was behind about six percent of cases.
The estimate is based on variant tracking data submitted from around the US, along with data suggesting how fast each species is growing in the country.
It is also now the second most common variety nationwide, behind another species from Omicron called ‘Kraken’.
California is the national hot spot, with 105 cases now confirmed there — doubling the number nearly two weeks ago.
Rounding out the top three are New Jersey (56 cases) and New York (45).
The states where it has been detected are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
India has not yet announced any deaths from the variant, but the strain has exploded the number of cases in the country 90 times since it first started two months ago.
The situation is so bad that some states are now being forced to bring back mandatory Covid face mask restrictions.
The number of deaths in the country from Covid has risen by about a quarter in a week to an average of 21 deaths per day, but it is not clear whether it concerns Arcturus.
The CDC told DailyMail.com: “In the United States, XBB.1.16 is currently responsible for only a small number of Covid cases, but reports suggest that XBB.1.16 may be driving an increase in Covid cases in India, Singapore and Brunei.
‘XBB.1.16 has genetic changes that could give it growth advantages over other lines.
‘[But] there is currently no evidence that XBB.1.16 causes more severe disease or reduced vaccine efficacy.”
Doctors have also suggested that the mutated variant causes conjunctivitis, or itchy eyes, in children it infects.
India now accounts for 61 percent of all recorded cases of XBB.1.16, British officials have warned. The dominant variant in the country, between March 20 and April 3, was more than two-thirds (68 percent) of all recorded Arcturus cases
While the rapid rise in Covid cases is of some concern, it is still well below the devastating wave the country experienced in 2021 from the Delta variant
Typical symptoms of Covid include high fever, cough, cold and loss of taste or smell.
But Vipin Vashishtha, a pediatrician consultant at Mangla Hospital and Research Center and a former civil servant at the Indian Academy of Paediatrics, revealed that symptoms affecting children’s eyes have seen a sudden increase.
“An infantile phenotype appears to be emerging,” he wrote on Twitter.
He is now seeing a rise in cases of ‘itchy’ conjunctivitis or ‘sticky eyes’, a symptom he had not seen during previous Covid waves.
Richard Reithinger, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the non-profit research institute RTI International, based in the US, also told Fortune magazine that he had heard such reports.
But it’s “probably too early to tell” whether the symptoms of the virus have really shifted, he noted.
Raj Rajnarayanan, assistant dean of research and associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology, added that there are currently “many anecdotes about childhood conjunctivitis in India.”