16 more Arcturus cases in PH, says DOH

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines has recorded 16 new cases of the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.16, commonly referred to as “Arcturus,” bringing the number of total infections to 44.

The latest biosurveillance report of the Department of Health (DOH) showed that all Arcturus cases were detected in Western Visayas.

Arcturus – a sublineage of the XBB subvariant – is tagged by the World Health Organization as a variant of interest.

Meanwhile, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control deems it a variant under monitoring.

The DOH recorded a total of 134 Omicron cases all in Western Visayas, including the Arcturus infections.

These were the fresh Omicron infections, according to the DOH:

• 33 BA.2.3.20
• 15 XBB.1.5
• 47 XBB.1.9.1
• 10 XBB.1.9.2.
• 7 XBB.2.3
• 5 other XBB subvariants
• 1 other sublineage

The agency also took note of five new cases with no assigned lineage, which would bring the case tally to 139.

These are the results of the genome sequencing done by the University of the Philippines – Philippine Genome Center in Visayas, with results released on May 22.

“Please note that results above must be interpreted with caution since this is primarily affected by sampling biases and other factors such as logistical issues encountered,” DOH said.

A total of 1,442 new COVID-19 infections were recorded by the DOH on Friday. The Philippines currently has around 14,888 active cases.

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