While the new Covid mutant (XBB) has not yet been consistently associated with an increase in new infections, health experts have warned that the variant is still said to be contagious and preventive measures must be followed.
Dr Abdullah al Qayudhi, a consultant in infections and immunity at the Directorate General of Disease Control at MoH, said, “The Covid XBB mutant is more contagious than others, according to the information available so far, and this is the reason for its spread in more than 26 countries, including Saudi Arabia. As chances of reaching Oman cannot be ruled out, we have to adhere to preventive measures.”
WHO’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution recently met to discuss the latest evidence on the Omicron variant of concern, and how its evolution is currently unfolding, in light of high levels of population immunity in many settings and country differences in the immune landscape.
Based on currently available evidence, the TAG does not feel that the overall phenotype of XBB and BQ.1 diverge sufficiently from each other, or from other Omicron lineages with additional immune escape mutations, in terms of the necessary public health response, to warrant the designation of new variants of concern and assignment of a new label.The two sub lineages remain part of Omicron, which continues to be a variant of concern.
“While so far there is no epidemiological evidence that these sublineages will be of substantially greater risk compared to other Omicron sublineages, we note that this assessment is based on data from sentinel nations and may not be fully generalisable to other settings. Wide-ranging, systematic laboratory-based efforts are urgently needed to make such determinations rapidly and with global interpretability,” WHO said.
As of now, there are no data to support escape from recent immune responses induced by other Omicron lineages. Whether the increased immune escape of XBB* is sufficient to drive new infection waves appears to depend on the regional immune landscape as affected by the size and timing of previous Omicron waves, as well as the Covid-19 vaccination coverage.The role of the TAG-VE is to alert WHO if a variant with a substantially different phenotype (e.g. a variant that can cause more severe disease or lead to large epidemic waves causing increased burden to the healthcare system) is emerging and likely to pose a significant threat.
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