COVID-19 Update

Confirmation that we need to be careful.

A flurry of new Covid-19 variants appears to be gaining traction globally, raising fears of a winter surge.

In the United States, these are BQ.1, BQ.1.1, BF.7, BA.4.6, BA.2.75 and BA.2.75.2. In other countries, the recombinant variant XBB has been rising quickly and appears to be fueling a new wave of cases in Singapore. Cases are also rising in Europe and the UK, where these variants have taken hold.

Dr. Peter Hotez, who co-directs the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, says he thinks of them collectively as the Scrabble variants because they use letters that get high scores in the board game like Q, X and B.

As the US moves into the fall, Covid-19 cases are dropping. Normally, that would be a reason for hope that the nation could escape the surges of the past two pandemic winters. But virus experts fear that the downward trend may soon reverse itself, thanks to this gaggle of new variants.

Lumped together, the variants accounted for almost 1 in 3 new Covid-19 infections nationwide last week, according to the latest estimates from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The updated bivalent booster vaccines and antiviral drugs like Paxlovid are expected to continue to be protective against severe outcomes from Covid-19 infections caused by the new variants.

But the new variants are particularly devastating for millions of Americans who have weakened immune systems. New research suggests that changes in these variants make them impervious to the last lab-created antibodies available to help treat and prevent severe cases of Covid-19, and the US government has run out of money to incentivize the creation of new ones.

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