4 confirmed cases of COVID-19 subvariant ‘Kraken’ in Alberta

The latest subvariant of COVID-19, dubbed “Kraken,” has already made its way into Alberta.

The province has confirmed four cases of Kraken, also known as the XBB.1.5 subvariant.

Dr. Craig Jenne, associate professor of microbiology, immunology, and infectious diseases at the University of Calgary, says it’s likely the Kraken offshoot of Omicron is already spreading in Alberta because of recent holiday gatherings.

“The fact that we have a number of cases in British Columbia, the fact that we’ve seen a large number of cases in the U.S. – this appears maybe to be a variant that did originate even in the U.S. – and the lack of screening, for example, for travellers crossing the Canada-U.S. border,” Jenne told CityNews.

He says the new Kraken subvariant is not a separate viral variant of COVID-19 yet, and it’s a little misleading that it already has its own name. According to Jenne, Kraken isn’t significantly different from Omicron in terms of how it functions.

“What we do know about it though, is it appears to be more infectious, it does appear to spread much more quickly, but the good news is that it does not appear to cause more severe disease than some of the other versions of the virus,” Jenne said. “What we’re looking at is we may see a substantial number of new cases – once again seeing infectious waves – and unfortunately we do know that there’s always a percentage of people who catch the virus that will end up with severe disease and require medical attention.”

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It’s unclear at the moment how big future waves of COVID-19 will get, and how that will affect hospitals in the province.

Jenne adds the virus is very good at evading our immunity, but the best advice he can give will always be to be up to date with your vaccines. He says if you’ve gotten a booster shot in the last few months, the chances of you being hospitalized with the virus are dramatically lower than someone who hasn’t been vaccinated at all.

“These vaccines that were put out more than a year ago continue to protect against severe disease,” he said. “They’ve lost some efficacy in preventing infection or spread… but critically, they are still preventing severe disease – provided they remain up to date.”

Jenne recommends talking to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a booster shot if you haven’t had one in the last three or four months.

Looking at statistics from across Canada, Alberta is near the bottom of the list of provinces when it comes to the number of people vaccinated against COVID-19, as well as the number of people who have not gotten a booster shot.

Jenne adds this could put unnecessary strain on the province’s healthcare system – similar to the devastating waves of winter 2021 – if the new subvariant causes another significant number of cases that require hospitalization.

“If we get a large wave with a highly infectious variant and our current immune status, there is a risk we will see an uptick in hospitalizations, an uptick in ICU admissions,” Jenne said. “It looks like we’re getting through the worst of the flu at the moment, which is good news — but we have to appreciate that the healthcare workers, those frontline people that keep up going, are exhausted. We cannot simply pile yet another wave on top of them and expect to handle it that same way we did two years ago.”

–With files from Shilpa Downton.