By Staff
January 12th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
The XBB family of variants emerged a few months ago and caught virologists’ attention because it contains more mutations to evade immunity than any other variant. The XBB.1.5 variant has a mutation virologists believe is helping the virus better bind to cells and thus be more transmissible.
The latest Covid19 news has to do with a new variant XBB.1.5
The details: XBB.1.5 is “the most transmissible” variant yet, which means even people who are vaccinated or have gotten covid19 before are getting infected.
What else to know: There’s no evidence so far that XBB.1.5 is making people sicker or that it evolved because of vaccines.
So what now? Vaccination, high-quality masks and avoiding crowds are your best bet at protection.
The link to the Regional data dashboard so far doesn’t have a word about the new variant.
This pandemic is far from over – why has the data coming out of the Medical Officer of Health not made any mention. Keeping the public as fully informed as possible is THE MoH mandate.
Pepper your last sentence is absolutely accurate. However, the truth is that well before a supposedly undetected infectious disease outbreak (evidence is it was detected just not reported as was required) took 91lives at our hospital we have not being able to rely on the Halton Health Board or MOH keeping us informed.
The first publicly reported incident that identified such was when MOH Dr. Nosal failed to report a Halton death from West Nile virus to the Health Board (Reg Cncl) and thus the public and never even got a slap on the wrist. We took the matter to the Coll of Phys. & Surgeons complaint committee at our expense.. Our efforts produced comparable results to recent Integrity Comm reports. Since that time MOH interaction with the public in terms of their well-being has exponentially deteriorated. No-one fully understands the negative impact on Halton resident well-being of this deviation from appropriate health info communication.
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