The bad news is that the XBB subvariant of Omicron is likely the most immune-evasive. The good news is that the new “bivalent” vaccine boosters from Pfizer and Moderna seem to work just fine against it.
of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that drove a record wave of infections starting around a year ago, XBB is in many ways the worst form of the virus so far. It’s more contagious than any previous variant or subvariant. It also evades the antibodies from monoclonal therapies, potentially rendering a whole category of drugs ineffective as COVID treatments.
Scientists first identified XBB in August. It’s one of several major subvariants that have evolved from the basic Omicron variant, piling on more and more mutations on key parts of the virus—especially the spike protein, the part of the virus that helps it grab onto and infect our cells. Immune-escape is the common quality. At least two of the Scrabble subvariants—XBB and BQ.1.1—are pretty much unrecognizable to existing antibody therapies and somewhatrecognizable to the antibodies produced by the prime doses of the leading messenger-RNA vaccines.
Pfizer and Moderna formulated these new boosters to include some genetic instructions specifically for attacking the BA.5 subvariant of Omicron, which is still the dominant form of SARS-CoV-2 but is disappearing fast as XBB and the other Scrabble subvariants outcompete it.
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