Three Thais in Hong Kong were found infected with the latest coronavirus variant, XBB, according to health officials there amid signs the kingdom could be experiencing another large wave of infections.
Raising the prospect that XBB is already circulating in Thailand, the three Thais tested positive within two days of their arrival, according to Hong Kong data shared by the director of Thailand’s National Center for Genetic Engineering.
“The data said 29 people had tested positive for the XBB virus in the country, 24 of whom were detected on arrival and five after two days of stay in Hong Kong, most of them from Singaporeans,” Director Anan Jongkaewwattana wrote. “But what is interesting is that there are three people traveling from Thailand. It may be that XBB is already mixed in with the COVID-19 cases in Thailand. But it may still be randomly undetected.”
Anan said a hard conclusion that the virus came from Thailand was premature as it was possible the Thais had only transited through Thailand from elsewhere.
But Thailand’s official count of new coronavirus cases, now updated weekly instead of daily, hasn’t been updated since Oct. 1. However Johns Hopkins University’s global tracker shows the case load exploded in recent days, rising to 28,862 on Wednesday after sliding below 1,000 most days since the end of August.
The most cases of the highly transmissible XBB strain first detected mid-August have been in Singapore.
Thirteen of the travelers found to be ill in Hong Kong Singaporeans, two were from Indonesia, and five from India. The report from Hong Kong’s Public Health Authority also found patients from the United States, Germany, UAE, Czech Republic, and United Kingdom.
Singapore has been detecting more than 5,500 cases per day on average. While the variant is said to better evade immune responses, the Singaporean government insists that there’s been no evidence of it causing “more severe illness than previous variants.” It added that two weeks of data found XBB infections were 30% less likely to result in hospitalization than the Omicron BA.5 variant, and no rise in deaths had occurred.
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