It’s called Xec and it’s a new entry. In the coming months, the current panorama of Covid variants that in various parts of the world have ignited the engine of particularly intense summer waves could change. Appeared for the first time “in Berlin at the end of June”, Xec is a recombinant variant, and has already been detected in 3 different continents. Since its initial debut, it has “spread quite rapidly throughout Europe, North America and Asia” and “continues to spread.”
What we know
It appears to be “a likely next challenger to the now dominant variants (KP.3.1.1 and descendants),” explains data expert Mike Honey from Melbourne (Australia), who in recent days has drawn an initial identikit of Xec. But several variant hunters have already set their sights on it. And Raj Rajnarayanan, professor at Nyitcom-Arkansas State University, is photographing its advance in several graphs he has posted on X. In one published on August 18, two Xec sequences already appeared in Italy, detected in Veneto and Trentino Alto Adige on July 31 and 18 respectively.
What is striking, Honey highlights in a focus posted on X, is the “growth advantage” it is showing “globally”, and which is estimated “at 3.8% per day (27% per week)” compared to the JN.1 variants that already have additional mutations that make them competitive (Honey calls them ‘DeFLuQE’ variants). According to the expert, the new ‘contender’ seems to have “the fastest growth I am aware of”. Until a few days ago, about 111 samples of this new variant had been reported, from 15 countries on 3 continents. Israel and Spain have recently reported their first samples.
Xec “is a mix” of two different variants: “KS.1.1 (a so-called FLiRT variant) and KP.3.3 (FluQE variant),” Honey lists, according to whom this new version of Sars-CoV-2 “could have an advantage” in particular from its “unusual mutation” (T22N), combined with those that already characterize the faster variants. Its growth “has been strongest in Germany, its presumed origin”, but Xec is also making itself noticed “in neighboring Denmark and the Netherlands”.
#Covid #Xec #variant #arrived #Italy
