What Is COVID XEC Variant, The Strain That Is Spreading Fast In The West?

A new coronavirus variant is spreading fast through Europe and also the United States. It is called the XEC. As of September 2024, it had infected 600 people across Europe and North America right before the winter season in the Northern Hemisphere. The winter season is known for respiratory diseases being widespread in the reason, since then the number has only shot up. UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) reveals that COVID-19 cases have stayed high, with 1,081 confirmed cases recorded as of December 4. The number of deaths are at 12 in the UK during the 7 days preceding November 22. An increase in hospitalization was also noted, where the numbers reached 1,085 in the week up to November 30. This also marked 1.5% hike from the previous week.

As per a report by Aljazeera, the variant is more contagious than the previous types of COVID strains and spreads more easily. However, the cases of infection have not been as severe as those in the peak of pandemic, especially in 2020-21.

XEC is a "recombinant" version of SARS-CoV-2. In late 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) identified nine variants of COVID-19, which were active during that time. There are more than 50 variants which have already been identified, though some are no longer spreading.

Stuart Ray, M.D., vice chair of medicine for data integrity and analytics of John Hopkins Medicine and expert in SARS-CoV-2, said that as long as the coronavirus spreads through the populations, mutations will continue to happen. "New variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are detected every week,” Ray says. “Most come and go — some persist, but don’t become more common; some increase in the population for a while, and then fizzle out. When a change in the infection pattern first pops up, it can be very hard to tell what’s driving the trend — changes to the virus, or changes in human behavior. It is worrisome that similar changes to the spike protein are arising independently on multiple continents.”

Same is the case with XEC, a variant and a mutation indeed. It is a recombinant, which forms when a person is infected with two different strains of COVID at the same time. Genetic mutation from the two different strains then "recombine" or "exchange" with each other, and create a third strain.

The symptoms, however have been reported as mild and the new strain is called to be part of the Omicron lineage, which spiked in 2022.

Each variant or strain develops mutation, or is what we know as spike proteins. These "proteins" are what bind to human cells, and allows the virus to enter and start replicating inside the body.

As overtime, Omicron has also developed its offshoots through mutation like KP.3.3 and KS.1.1, they have recombined to form the wide spreading strain in Europe XEC.

It spreads like any other strain of Coronavirus. It is primarily transmitted through respiratory droplets, through breathing, talking, coughing or sneezing. The virus too can survive on the surface and transmit through surface, however, this is less common than the airborne spread.

The new strain was first detected by researchers in Berlin, Germany, in August among COVID-19 samples which were collected two months previously. It was collected as a part of routine COVID-19 surveillance, in which genetic material from nasal swabs of infected people were analyzed.