Health experts are cautiously monitoring EU.1.1, a new SARS-CoV-2 subvariant the CDC started tracking this week. So far, experts said they have not seen anything that raises red flags.
The variant is a descendent of XBB.1.5, the nation's dominant strain, which currently accounts for 27 percent of COVID-19 cases, CDC data shows. EU.1.1 accounts for 1.7 percent of cases.
Utah has reported 97 cases of the new subvariant — the most of any state. However, Utah's COVID-19 activity remains low in trend with the rest of the U.S., according to CBS News. The state is also doing more virus sequencing than most others in the region, which could explain the high number of cases detected, according to Kelly Oakeson, PhD, chief scientist of the Utah Department of Health & Human Services.
"So far, it's nothing that we've seen to [be a] cause for concern or alarm," she told MedPage Today. "We're not seeing any kind of increases in hospitalizations or anything."
The subvariant does contain several mutations in the spike protein that make it more transmissible than XBB.1.5, "but it doesn't have any advantage over other circulating lineages right now," according to Raj Rajnarayanan, PhD, assistant dean of research and associate professor in the department of basic sciences at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.