Is the updated COVID vaccine a good match for the current variant and the emerging strain?

Northeastern University professors of pharmacy say the updated COVID-19 vaccines available for fall and winter of 2024 are a good match for the dominant strain of SARS-CoV-2 currently in circulation. The mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer are not a 100% match since they're based on the KP.2 strain that was spreading in early spring, says Mansoor Amiji, university distinguished professor of pharmaceutical sciences and chemical engineering.

The current dominant strain is KP.3.1.

1, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says accounted for 57% of U.S. cases of COVID as of Oct.

26. "My understanding of these variants is that the KP strains are very similar to each other," descending as they do from the omicron family, Amiji says. A newly emerging variant called XEC is also a member of the omicron family but is a little bit more of a wild card with its rapid emergence on the COVID scene, going from 5% of total U.

S. cases at the end of September to 17% one month later. "It's not clear if XEC will become dominant," Amiji says.

"It's a very new variant and we don't know a lot about how different it is from KP (strains)." "It seems like XEC has a couple of mutations to the spike protein that make it a little bit more transmissible, so it's probably going to eventually surpass KP3.1.

1," says Brandon Dionne, clinical professor in pharmacy and health systems science. Hospitalizations have increased slightly In other countries where XEC has taken hold, hospitalizations hav.