The fast-spreading Covid Arcturus variant may have a symptom not seen in other strains, according to doctors in India - where rising infections has led to a return of mask rules.
The Omicron sub-variant has led to a spike in cases years on from the coronavirus pandemic peak, and doctors are noticing that more young patients with the virus are experiencing conjunctivitis.
Conjunctivitis - or pink eye - is red, sore eye inflammation, usually caused by an allergy, and has been seen in children and adolescents testing positive for the variant in India, reports the Mirror.
Indian paediatrician Vipn M. Vashishtha, also a member of the WHO's Vaccine Safety Net programme, said at the start of April that he was seeing Covid cases in children "once again after a gap" of six months.
Youngsters were presenting with a high fever, cold and cough, and "itchy conjunctivitis" with "sticky eyes", according to the doctor.
However, Dr Michael Chang, a paediatric infections diseases expert at UTHealth Houston and Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital, told Yahoo News there isn't enough evidence to prove that Covid Arcturus causes conjunctivitis.
"We don't have the context of whether they're seeing that in some of the regions in India," he said.
"We know their Covid cases are going up, and presumably, these kids are testing positive for Covid, but we don't know if they're testing positive for anything else either."
The expert explained that pink eye may instead be caused by other viruses including adenovirus, which is common in spring and summer.
Dr Chang said: "so even if Covid cases go up, unless you're doing testing for both Covid and adenovirus, which most people aren't... it may be difficult [to determine] what's causing your pink eye."
Now present in at least 29 countries including the UK, Arcturus, known as XBB.1.16, was mentioned by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in March as a "varient of monitoring" - a lesser threat than a "variant of interest".
There has been no reported increase in severity in cases caused by Arcturus compared to other omicron variants.
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