A FEW months into the covid-19 pandemic, it was rare to have a conversation without antibodies, vaccines and viruses being mentioned in the same breath. More than three years on, we shouldn’t let that interest wane – especially as we face one of the coronavirus’s latest variants, XBB.1.5, or “Kraken” as some have named it.
It certainly appears to be deserving of its monster moniker. This subvariant of omicron is now the dominant strain in the US and is spreading rapidly throughout Europe and Asia.
It is the most transmissible subvariant discovered yet, due to changes in its spike protein, the …