Yet another new Covid variant is spreading around the world and may reach before Christmas, with those travelling abroad warned to be particularly vigilant.
The ‘potentially more infectious’ XEC strain was first detected in Germany in June and has been identified in 27 countries since then.
Experts believe the strain could become the dominant variant within months as the weather gets colder in the northern hemisphere.
‘XEC is a recombinant of two other sub variants,’ n infectious diseases expert Dr Paul Griffin told Daily Mail on Monday.
It is a descendant of the Omicron Covid strain and a recombinant variant of KS.1.1 and KP.3.3.
‘It’s still fairly early days, so speculation around symptoms or severity etc is a little bit early to do at this point in time,’ Dr Griffin said.
‘But what we had in the countries where it appeared early is it does appear to have a significant growth advantage which would suggest it’s likely to be immune, evasive and potentially more infectious.’
Because of this, the medical community is ‘paying close attention to it to see whether it may be the next sub-variant that causes another increase in activity,’ he said.
Dr Griffin said it is not yet known if XEC can be combatted with existing vaccines.
‘The vaccination plan at this stage is quite complicated. The World Health Organization and essentially every other regulatory body agreed on JN.1 as being the new vaccine.
‘The US came out and then said they wanted a KP.2 vaccine (but) the rest of the world is rolling out or in the process of rolling out JN.1 updated boosters, and that will still be what we get here,’ he said.
But if XEC does turn out to be a very significant sub-variant, more work will need to be done in updating the vaccines.
‘The main thing about Covid is it’s still quite unpredictable,’ Dr Griffin said.
‘There’s a large number of factors that contribute to whether we see increased waves of transmission.’
Experts say one reason we get an increase in Covid cases in in the lead up to Christmas is because the other side of the world is in the middle of their winter where conditions are conducive to increases in transmission.
‘The world is once again a very small place, and that activity does flow on to being imported into our country,’ Dr Griffin said.
‘We could have another wave of increased transmission in the next few weeks or it could be months till we see that.’
The Department of Health said as of August 29 no sequences of the XEC variant had yet been reported to ‘s genomic surveillance system.
‘Continuing evolution of SARS-CoV-2 lineages is expected and the Interim n Centre for Disease Control continues to closely monitor the emergence of new Covid-19 variants, both within and internationally,’ a spokesperson said.
‘In , states and territories undertake targeted genomic sequence sampling to ensure we remain vigilant in responding to emerging variants.’