“A serious competitor to the current dominant variants.”
We might tend to forget it, but it is still there. The Covid virus is still circulating, including in France, but often in other forms. The latest variant is XEC, a mix of the old Omicron variants: KS.1.1 and KP.3.3. More dangerous than the others? It is difficult to say at the moment since scientists have little information. However, health authorities prefer to monitor it closely as it could acquire “additional mutations in the Spike protein that could play a significant role in its virological characteristics“such as increased infectivity or an ability to evade vaccines, recalls Public Health France in its latest risk analysis linked to emerging variants (September 2024). The French health authority has not, for the moment, classified it among the variants of concern or to be “monitored”.
“It appears to be a likely serious competitor to the current dominant variants“, says Mike Honey, a Covid-19 data analyst.And it will take several weeks, if not months, before the phenomenon really gains momentum and begins to cause a wave.“, continues Eric Topol, geneticist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California, quoted by the Los Angeles Times.
For now, “a very limited number of cases of XEC have been reported” says a spokesperson for the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Its presence was first detected in Berlin, Germany, in June 2024. Since then, it has spread “quite quickly”. As of September 3, it has been identified in about fifteen countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and France, where it represents 1% of referenced sequences, according to the Outbreak.info page of Scripps Research, which tracks data from the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID).
Like all variants, XEC causes a range of symptoms: fatigue, sore throat, runny nose, headache, fever, muscle stiffness, cough, loss of smell and appetite, abdominal pain and even diarrhoea. Speaking to BBC News, Professor François Balloux, director of the Institute of Genetics at University College London, said that although XEC is more “transmissible” than other recent Covid variants, vaccines should still offer good protection against it.
