CDC says it's now tracking a new COVID variant known as XBB

XBB variant's arrival won't cause a new deadly COVID surge, officials hope

Nov 26, 2022 by CBS News

Key Facts

  • November 25, 2022 / 2:39 PM / CBS News The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed Friday it is now tracking a new COVID-19 variant of concern around the U.S. known as XBB, which has grown to make up an estimated 3.1% of new infections nationwide.
  • XBB is behind a vast swath of infections across some South Asian countries and has made up an increasing share of reported virus sequences from around the world and in arriving international travelers.
  • "There has been a rapid rise in XBB, but it doesn't look like it's particularly more severe than other variants," Derek Smith, director of the Center for Pathogen Evolution at the University of Cambridge, told CBS News in an interview late last month.
  • "XBB, it got our attention and then was prioritized, even though it was small numbers, because it had quite a number of substitutions different from the currently circulating viruses in the [receptor-binding domain], which meant that it might be an escape variant," Smith said.

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