Key Points
- For weeks, scientists have been watching a slew of Omicron descendants duke it out for dominance of Covid-19 transmission in the United States, with the BQs – BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 – seeming to edge out all the others to claim a slight lead.
- The result has been a gradual rise in cases and hospitalizations that never seemed to reach the peaks of this summer’s BA.5 wave and was certainly nothing like the tsunami of illness caused by the original Omicron strain a year ago.
- But on Friday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid-19 variant dashboard revealed a new dark horse that could soon sweep the field: XBB.1.5.
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