Arcturus new Covid variant emerges with this never-seen-before ...

Ever since the cases of Covid-19 spiked in India recently, the Internet has been buzzing with reports surrounding the subvariant of coronavirus.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is also keeping a close eye on the new subvariant of Covid, XBB.1.16, which is also called Arcturus. The cases linked to this new Covid subvariant are also rising in other countries such as the US, Australia and Singapore.

According to a report in Times Of India, Covid cases in kids aged under 12 have rapidly increased.

Here's What We Know So Far:Arcturus is a subvariant combination of other two subvariants of the Omircon variant. In late March, the WHO declared the virus a "variant under monitoring", adding that it is the most transmissible variant of Covid-19 yet.

As per reports, Maria Van Kerkhove, Covid technical lead fro the WHO called the Covid variant "one to watch".

Dr. Vipin M Vashishtha, a pediatrician and former head of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Immunization took to Twitter to throw the light on the variant and rising cases of Covid in the world.

He also listed out symptoms of Covid's new subvarint, Arcturus. According to the doctor, symptoms include high fever, cough and another symptom that was not seen with the previous Covid variants - itchy conjunctivitis or pinkeye.Richard Reithinger, an infectious disease epidemiologist at RTI International said that it was too early to tell I the virus' symptoms have shifted and whether conjunctivitis has previously been reported as a Covid symptoms

The current rise in Covid cases is being driven by XBB.1.16, which is a sub variant of Omicron.

Several other reports suggest that while Omicron and its sub-lineages continue to be the dominant variant, most of the assigned variants have little or no significant transmissibility, disease severity or immune escape.

The prevalence of XBB.1.16 increased from 21.6 per cent in February this year to 35.8 per cent in March.