BQ.1, BQ.1.1, BF.7, XBB…

CDC COVID Data Tracker 10/19/22

(Click 0n image to enlarge)

 

Anyone interested in following the mutation journey of the pandemic virus, SARS – CoV-2, is going to need a scorecard. Since early summer, Omicron BA.5 has been the dominant subvariant causing COVID-19 in the United States, and it still accounts for almost 70% of all acute COVID-19 infections. But as the graphic above indicates, new and potentially more dangerous subvariants are arriving in droves and slowly pushing BA.5 out of the way.

Take BA.4.6, for example — directly descended from BA.4 — which now accounts for 12.2% of new cases in the U.S. this week.

There are two other up-and-coming subvariants — BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, both evolved from the currently dominant BA.5 — that have public health experts alarmed. Adrianna Rodriguez reports that combined, both new strains account for 11.4% of new cases this week:

BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, the newest strains, have gained the attention of top health experts due to its rate of increase since it was first identified in early September. “This has a pretty troublesome doubling time,” President Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said […]

Dr. Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine Houston, called BQ.1.1 on Twitter the “most likely candidate” to drive a COVID wave, if that were to happen in the coming months.

 

Chloe Taylor describes a good news-bad news situation brewing just in time for the winter holiday season:

Alongside BQ.1 and BQ.1.1’s rapid infection rates, [Fauci] voiced concern about the latter’s apparent ability to evade antibody treatments being used for patients at risk of developing severe COVID symptoms.

“That’s the reason why people are concerned about BQ.1.1, for the double reason of its doubling time and the fact that it seems to elude important monoclonal antibodies,” Fauci told CBS.

“The bad news is that there’s a new variant that’s emerging and that has qualities or characteristics that could evade some of the interventions we have,” Fauci told CBS. “But, the somewhat encouraging news is that it’s a BA.5 sublineage, so there is almost certainly going to be some cross protection that you can boost up.”

 

Unfortunately, new mutations don’t end there. Racing up on the inside track is a variation of BA.5 that contains a new (R346T) mutation — BF.7 (like I said, you need a scorecard). Rodriguez says BF.7 accounts for 5.3% of new cases this week, according to the CDC COVID Data Tracker:

“It is also picked up a few mutations we know will evade vaccine induced immunity so we’re keeping an eye on it to see how much of that immunity it will evade,” Pekosz said.

As of Oct. 12, the CDC reports about about 14.8 million Americans have gotten their updated booster.

“If people went out and got the vaccine, they’d be able to boost their protection against these variants and limit spread of these viruses before they evolve more mutations,” Pekosz said.

 

Careening around Asia right now is XBB, which David Axe calls “the nightmare variant that beats our immunity.”

XBB is in many ways the worst form of the virus so far. It’s more contagious than any previous variant or subvariant. It also evades the antibodies from monoclonal therapies, potentially rendering a whole category of drugs ineffective as COVID treatments.

“It is likely the most immune-evasive and poses problems for current monoclonal antibody-based treatments and prevention strategy,” Amesh Adalja, a public-health expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told The Daily Beast.

 

Fortunately, the new booster shots (now available for kids 5 and older) should help keep any of these emerging subvariants at bay — at least for the time being:

The good news is that the new “bivalent” vaccine boosters from Pfizer and Moderna seem to work just fine against XBB, even though the original vaccines are less effective against XBB. They won’t prevent all infections and reinfections, but they should significantly reduce the chance of severe infection potentially leading to hospitalization or death. “Even with immune-evasive variants, vaccine protection against what matters most—severe disease—remains intact,” Adalja said.

 

The new COVID-19 bivalent booster shots are not indicated for the primary series, which provides good coverage of the early SARS-CoV-2 viruses but is less powerful against the Omicron subvariants. So it’s important that everyone complete the primary series first before boosting up for greater protection.

If your child is due for a COVID-19 vaccine, call your pediatrician’s office and schedule a time to come in that’s convenient. And please don’t forget to get a flu shot, too!

 

source http://www.thepediablog.com/2022/10/20/bq-1-bq-1-1-bf-7-xbb/