Kingston-area health officials keep tabs on new COVID-19 variant

The new Omicron subvariant, nicknamed “The Kraken,” is making its way through the United States. It hasn’t made much of a dent in Ontario yet, but there is a chance it could come north of the border.

“We are not seeing it in the Kingston community yet,” said Stephen Brown, KFL&A Public Health’s co-director of the Wastewater Surveillance Initiative Group.

Brown, a researcher with Queen’s University, is on the team monitoring Kingston’s Wastewater for traces of COVID.

“There’s not much of it in Ontario yet,” Brown said. “I think there have been a few cases identified. But the trend has been, once it gets into a community, it’s more infectious than the other subvariants, and it tends to take over.”

The current dominant strain in Kingston is BQ1, which is a spinoff of the BA.5 Omicron variant.

Even though XBB is sweeping through the U.S., making up nearly half of all COVID cases, KFL&A Public Health isn’t worried about it at this point.

“Through our surveillance, we know that this XBB1.5 does not appear to be increasing in a worrisome pattern,” said Dr. Piotr Oglaza chief medical officer of health.

1:31 Nursing Shortage

Early studies are showing that the bivalent vaccine, which targets Omicron and its subvariants, has effectiveness against serious illness from XBB.

And Oglaza says that so far, it seems that this new subvariant isn’t as severe as the others.

“Early evidence, very promising, suggests that it’s less severe. But as always, we like to look at that with caution and still maintain the same precautions as we have with previous strains,” Oglaza said.

As for the general COVID-19 picture in the Kingston region, things have calmed down since the holidays.

According to wastewater data, there was a spike in late December, but the numbers decreased in January.

“The levels in the wastewater are, I’m going to call it, moderate and stable. There are still lots of people with COVID in the community, but it looks kind of the same now as it did back in the beginning of December,” Oglaza said.