Reason to worry? Covid variant XBB accounts for more than 18% of US cases

The Omicron subvariant XBB accounts for 18.3% of the COVID-19 cases in the United States for the week ended December 24, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday. This marks an increase of 11.2% in the previous week as the XBB variant continues to drive up cases in Singapore.

Read more: 'Once-in-a-generation' winter storm freezes US: What is a bomb cyclone

Earlier this week, the total number of confirmed Covid cases in the United States surpassed 100 million, according to data from Johns Hopkins University on Tuesday. The data showed that the US Covid case count rose to 100,002,248 since the pandemic broke out almost three years ago, with a total of 1,088,218 deaths.

On the state level, California topped the caseload list, with more than 11.6 million cases, followed by Texas and Florida with confirmed cases of about 8.1 million and more than 7.3 million, respectively, the data showed.

Omicron subvariants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 accounted for about 70 percent of new cases in the week ending December 17 as BQ.1 was estimated to make up 30.7 percent of circulating variants, while BQ.1.1 was estimated to make up about 38.4 percent, CDC said.

Read more: ‘I am innocent… ok?’: Serial killer Charles Sobhraj on Nepal murders

The surge comes as in the United States flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are also spreading. The trio is dubbed by some doctors as a “tripledemic” as there have been at least 15 million illnesses, 150,000 hospitalizations, and 9,300 deaths from flu so far this season, according to the CDC.

Levels of respiratory syncytial virus also remain at record or near-record high, the CDC said. Earlier, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center estimated that over three-quarters of ICU beds in the US will be occupied through Christmas – a similar level to it was two years ago, during the height of the Covid.