It’s hard to keep up with the evolving COVID-19 variant scene, but two new spinoffs from Omicron—BQ.1 and BQ.1.1—are gaining traction in the U.S.
The most recent bivalent COVID-19 booster, approved just last week for those as young as age 5, directly targets the original strain of COVID-19 along with the dominant Omicron variants, BA.4 and BA.5. Just as people make their appointments for another jab, BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 comprise over 11% of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The two emerging strains are not far from becoming the second most dominant in the U.S.
BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 descend from the known BA.5, so with some relief, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the president’s chief medical adviser, told CBS on Friday that the bivalent booster targeting Omicron will “almost certainly” provide “some” protection.
Half of the antigens in the new booster, hence the name bivalent, work to attack the Omicron subvariants of COVID, and therefore, the bivalent booster “should give you more protection against these variants that are now emerging,” Dr. Tina Tan, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, tells Fortune.
“Scientifically, it makes sense that if you have a booster that is aimed toward the Omicron subvariants…the better protection you’re going to have against Omicron subvariants,” Tan says, which includes the spinoffs BQ.1 and BQ.1.1.
In general, the more “antibody titers,” or amount of antibodies someone has as measured in the blood, the more protection they have against any strain of the virus, Tan says.
Despite “COVID vaccine fatigue,” or the exhaustion associated with having to continuously monitor and adhere to emerging science on protection, and a lack of social distancing more generally, vaccination and boosting remains “the only way that we’re going to be able to have some control over this pandemic,” she says.
“The bottom line is that people need to realize the more we allow these viruses to circulate in the community, the higher the risk there is for these viruses to mutate,” she says. “That’s why it is so important to get more and more individuals vaccinated and boosted so that you decrease the circulation of these viruses in the community, which decreases the transmission and lowers the risk for the development of new subvariants.”
This comes as one in five people have not heard anything at all about updated boosters, per a survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation as of last month, something experts hope to distill as the surge approaches.
