By now, we all understand that COVID will continue to evolve frequently. It’s easy to brush off news of virus mutations, but being aware of potentially concerning variants is pretty important at this stage of the pandemic. (After all, the omicron variant caused so much mayhem, it spurred the development of an updated vaccine, aka the bivalent booster.)
Now, public health experts are warning about a rise in several “scrabble” variants; they have collectively led to nearly one in three new COVID infections in the country, according to the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
That’s a pretty big deal since omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 dominated the US as recently as mid-September. Two variants in particular—BQ.1 and BQ.1.1—recently accounted for at least 11% of all COVID infections in the country, per the CDC.
The issue with this collection of variants is that experts believe “they’re more immune-evasive,” Thomas Russo, MD, professor and chief of infectious disease at the University at Buffalo in New York, tells SELF. So, how concerned should you be? Here’s what you should know as we head into the thick of cold and flu season.
What are the “scrabble” variants, exactly?
The term “scrabble variants” isn’t official or anything. It seems to have been coined by Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, who recently told CNN that the names of the rising variants remind him of high-scoring letters in the game Scrabble—Q, X, and B.
There’s a full list that you’ll be quizzed on later (kidding!). They include:
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- BQ.1
- BQ.1.1
- BF.7
- BA.4.6
- BA.2.75
- BA.2.75.2
In other parts of the world—particularly in Singapore—the XBB variant is also causing all sorts of trouble.
Overall, these variants “are descendants of BA.2, BA.4, and BA.5, and have accumulated additional immune-evasive mutations,” Amesh A. Adalja, MD, infectious disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, tells SELF. That means any partial protection you may have—either from the COVID vaccine or a previous COVID infection—is thought to be less effective against these newer variants compared to recent omicron strains.
BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, in particular, seem poised to circulate frequently in the coming months. Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently told CBS News that these variants are “troublesome” and have “qualities or characteristics that could evade some of the interventions we have.”
One reason for that? They have “minor mutations in the spike protein” that differentiate them from each other and from what’s circulating now, William Schaffner, MD, infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, tells SELF.
What COVID symptoms do the “scrabble” variants cause?
All data on these variants is “preliminary” because they’re so new, so it’s tough to say how the symptoms they cause may differ from previous strains, if they differ at all, Dr. Schaffner says. BA.4 and BA.5, for example, may have caused more back and neck pain, at least anecdotally, but symptoms still varied considerably, as SELF previously reported.
Source: SELF
