Arcturus: What We Know About The Strain Believed To Be Behind Recent Spike In India's Covid Cases

India has reported 11,109 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours. That is the highest number in eight months.

With this, the total active cases in India has increased to 49,622.

The new spike in cases is said to be driven by the Arcturus variant.

'Arcturus' is the name given to the XBB.1.16 strain.

This is how WHO's COVID-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove described the variant and its spread in a recent press meet, "One of the variants that we are monitoring is XBB1.16. It's actually very similar in profile to the XBB.1.5. It has one additional mutation in the spike protein".

Arcturus has been found to be nearly 1.2 times more transmissible than XBB.15 'Kraken' variant, which was previously considered the most infectious subvariant, according to a recent study conducted by the University of Tokyo.

The consolation is that the strain is not considered to be more deadly than the existing strains that are currently in circulation. It is only expected to cause a mild disease that does not result in hospitalisation.