New COVID-19 subvariant XEC threatens to become dominant in Europe

At the end of June this year, a new variant of COVID-19 labelled XEC, was detected for the first time in Germany and India. Its appearance in other countries is inevitable.

The British "Independent" reported on Wednesday that XEC was detected in over 500 samples collected for testing. This new subvariant has also been detected in China, the USA, and Europe.

As BBC News warns, this subvariant might become dominant in a few weeks.

It has already been found in Norway, Ukraine, and Germany. Meanwhile, experts in Poland have not confirmed the detection of this variant. The new subvariant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is one of the Omicron strains, which present through subsequent subvariants. Currently, the most common subvariant in many countries is KP.3.1.1.

However, it is expected that XEC will soon dominate. The new subvariant, as announced on platform X by Mike Honey from Melbourne, Australia, a COVID-19 data analyst, is spreading quite rapidly and looks like a potential new competitor to KP.3.1.1.

Professor Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translation Institute, shares this opinion. In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, he predicts that XEC will start to dominate in a few weeks, at the latest in a few months.

XEC's symptoms are similar to those of previous variants. They can include fever, sore throat, cough, loss of smell, loss of appetite, diarrhoea, and nausea. Importantly, the vaccines currently being introduced in the USA and the European Union are not targeted against XEC. They were designed to protect against the previously dominant Omicron subvariants.