New COVID-19 variant 'XEC' spreads in Europe

A new Covid variant dubbed XEC is spreading in Europe.

It's understood the XEC variant is a hybrid of the earlier omicron subvariants KS.1.1 and KP.3.3, currently dominant in Europe.

Official sources, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have not published information about the variant.

However, several sources — including US scientist and COVID-19 expert Eric Topol and Australian data analyst Mike Honey — have documented on social media the early spread of XEC across up to 27 countries to date including Poland, Norway, Luxembourg, Ukraine, Portugal, China, Denmark, Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands.

The symptoms of the XEC variant are similar to those of previous Covid variants, including fever, sore throat, cough, loss of sense of smell, loss of appetite, and body aches.

Scientists have also warned that this might be a 'more contagious' variant of COVID-19 and could soon become the dominant strain.

But since it is still only a sub-family of the same omicron lineage, scientists say keeping up to date with amended vaccines and booster shots would offer sufficient protection against severe illness and hospitalisation.

Unfortunately, these updated COVID-19 vaccines are not available in South Africa.