Covid-19: Should we be worried about the new XEC variant which could be at the origin of a new wave ?

Covid-19: Should we be worried about the new XEC variant ?

Presented by some experts as the next dominant variant of Covid-19, will XEC be the cause of a new wave in the coming months? ?

XEC was first identified in Germany in June 2024. According to Éric Topol, director of the Scripps research translational institute in California (United States), a biomedical research center, this new variant of Covid-19 is "a hybrid of the KS.1.1 and KP.3 variants.3", former sub-variants of BA.2. 86, itself descended from Omicron.

XEC has gained a lot of ground since the beginning of the summer and could soon become the new dominant sub-variant in place of KP.3.1.1, the last hyper-infectious variant, currently dominant in Europe and the United States. According to Mike Honey, a data scientist specializing in Covid, XEC has increased in Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France and the United States. According to the specialist, it is currently found in 27 countries on three continents.

Contacted by Destination Santé, the ECDC, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, emphasizes that to date, a very limited number of XEC detections have been reported in Europe. And no data currently allows for a direct assessment of immune evasion, transmissibility, severity or efficacy of the vaccine against severe forms of Covid-19 compared to other descendant lines of BA.2.86.

On the data currently available, in particular its mutations, the European health authority estimates that XEC should have similar characteristics to its cousins ​​currently in circulation; neither more nor less serious, and with an equivalent level of vaccine efficacy.

The ECDC believes that it is currently too early to know whether XEC will continue to progress. And, at this stage, there is no indication that XEC is influencing, upwards, the prevalence of Covid-19 in the countries where it has been reported.

Several months before the next wave ?

For his part, Dr Eric Topol estimated to Euronews that “XEC is only just beginning worldwide”. “It's going to take several weeks, a few months before it really settles in and starts to cause a wave,” he continues. “XEC is definitely taking over. (…) But it's going to take months before it reaches high levels.”