New COVID variant XEC spreads rapidly, expected to dominate soon
11:18 AM EDT, September 20, 2024
At the end of June this year, a new variant of COVID-19, designated as XEC, was first detected in Germany and India. It is expected to spread to other contininents.
On Wednesday, the British "Independent" reported that over 500 samples tested for the presence of XEC had been detected. The new subvariant has been detected, among other places, in China, the USA, and Europe.
As BBC News warns, in a few weeks this subvariant may become dominant.
A new viral scourge is brewing. The COVID-19 subvariant is already circulating in Europe
The new subvariant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is one of the variants of Omicron, manifesting in the form of subsequent subvariants. Currently, the most common of these in many countries is KP.3.1.1.
However, XEC is expected to dominate soon. The new subvariant, announced on platform X by Mike Honey, a COVID-19 data analyst from Melbourne, Australia, is spreading quite quickly and looks like the potential next competitor to KP.3.1.1.
The director of the Scripps Research Translation Institute, Prof. Eric Topol, holds the same opinion. In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, he predicts that XEC will start to dominate in a few weeks, at the latest within a few months.
The symptoms of XEC are similar to those of previous variants. They can include fever, sore throat, cough, loss of smell, loss of appetite, diarrhea, and nausea. Notably, the vaccines introduced in the USA and the European Union are not targeted at XEC. They were designed to protect against the previously dominant Omicron subvariants.
