The new and highly contagious COVID variant dubbed XBB.1.5 roughly doubled its prevalence in the Midwest over the last week and experts say that growth will likely continue in the weeks ahead.
"We definitely expect that this virus, this variant will continue to increase in proportion," Hannah Barbian, a virologist who tracks COVID variants with Rush University Medical Center, told NBC Chicago as cases of the new subvariant have already been detected in the city."So likely what we've seen in the East Coast, will happen in Chicago as well."
"The virus needs to bind tightly to cells to be more efficient at getting in and that could help the virus be a little bit more efficient at infecting people," Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University, toldJha echoed that finding, saying the variant"binds more tightly to the human ACE receptor," which can affect contagiousness.
While there are significant concerns surrounding the new strain, it remains an omicron subvariant, Arwady added, which offers less risk than if the variant were in an entirely different family. "It does look like the vaccine, the bivalent booster is providing continued protection against hospitalization with these variants," Pekosz told CNBC."It really emphasizes the need to get a booster particularly into vulnerable populations to provide continued protection from severe disease with these new variants."
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