Termed as 'more contagious', COVID-19's XEC variant spreads to 27 ...

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18 Sep 2024, 9:44 am

As it was reported by the scientific community during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is undergoing mutations which is resulting in new variants of coronavirus. The latest in the list of variants is the XEC, which the scientists believe, has the potential to become the dominant variant of COVID-19.

The XEC variant was first observed in Germany in June and has now been recorded from samples collected in the United States, United Kingdom, Denmark, and other European countries. 

At present, the XEC variant is recorded in 16-17 per cent of the COVID-19 cases in Denmark and Germany and about 11-13 per cent in the UK and the Netherlands. 

This latest variant is actually a sublineage of the omicron variant and is a hybrid of KS.1.1 and KP.3.3 sub-variants.

The scientists believe that XEC has a set of mutations that can make it more contagious than the bunch of variants that have propped up in the aftermath of the second wave of the pandemic which involved the delta variant. 

However, according to reports, the COVID-19 vaccines that are  available in preventing the viral infection will continue to work against XEC.

Francois Balloux, Director of the Genetics Institute at University College London, told BBC that although XEC has a ‘slight transmission advantage’ over other recent Covid variants, vaccines should still offer good protection.

“XEC is just getting started…  And that's going to take many weeks, a couple months, before it really takes hold and starts to cause a wave,” Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, in California, told Los Angeles Times.

The symptoms of an infection by XEC variant are similar to those of previous Covid variants, including fever, sore throat, cough, loss of sense of smell, loss of appetite, and body aches. 

Meanwhile, researchers have called for monitoring the XEC more closely to better understand its symptoms.