The new variant of Covid BQ1 could also become dominant in the United States and not only in Europe according to the forecasts of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (Ecdc). The latest update of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Cdc) in fact captures an important growth of the sub-variant which is already responsible for 1 out of 6 contagion.
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The new variant
The variant BQ.1 and its sub-variant BQ.1.1 have been present at least since the summer, but it is only since the beginning of October that an acceleration in their diffusion has begun to be observed.
In the last week of September, BQ1 was responsible for 1.8% while BQ 1.1 for 0.9% of infections, in the following week the numbers doubled to 3.4% and 1.7%. The race did not stop: in the week ended October 15 they were at 5.8% and 3.6%, last week they reached 9.4% and 7.2% respectively, 16.6% of the total.
The relative diffusion of the two sub-variants has practically doubled from week to week since the beginning of October. Over the same period, BA.5 went from 80.2% of sequenced samples to 62.2%. Last Friday the ECDC published a report which underlined a very similar dynamic in Europe.
BQ 1 “Escapes the immune system”
“It is likely that the growth rate is mainly determined by the ability to escape the immune system” of the new variant, writes the European agency. While it is “unlikely that the variant is also associated with an increase in intrinsic transmissibility compared to BA.5”. Finally, “there are currently no indications that BQ.1 is associated with a severity of the infection greater than BA.5 and this is unlikely to happen, given its high genetic similarity to BA.5”, concludes the ECDC.
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