{"id":788,"date":"2025-07-08T12:51:48","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T12:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=788"},"modified":"2025-07-08T12:51:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T12:51:48","slug":"what-to-know-about-the-new-covid-19-variant-xfg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=788","title":{"rendered":"What to Know About the New COVID-19 Variant XFG"},"content":{"rendered":"
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W<\/span>ith\u00a0summer travel at an all-time high<\/a>, new COVID-19 variants are brewing. Officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) recently\u00a0added<\/a>\u00a0another one to its list of variants under monitoring: XFG.<\/p>\n

XFG is spreading most widely in Southeast Asia, although cases have been reported in 38 countries. In the U.K., it accounts for\u00a030%<\/a>\u00a0of COVID-19 infections, and in the U.S.,\u00a014%<\/a>\u00a0of confirmed cases are XFG, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (These data are likely incomplete: the CDC notes that since less data are being reported, the variant trackers are not precise.)<\/p>\n

Here’s what we know so far about XFG.<\/p>\n

It’s a “variant under monitoring<\/strong>“<\/h2>\n

This designation is the least urgent of WHO\u2019s variant categories, which escalate from “variant under monitoring” to “variant of interest” to “variant of concern.” But while variants under monitoring pose a low immediate risk to people, they show signs of being able to grow and potentially spread more easily than other circulating variants that don’t get an official WHO designation. WHO is watching XFG closely, but it is so new that experts aren\u2019t sure yet what the health consequences of such growth might be.<\/p>\n

XFG is different from existing variants<\/strong><\/h2>\n

XFG is still in the Omicron family. It derives from the\u00a0JN.1 Omicron<\/a>\u00a0group, which is the target of the\u00a0latest COVID-19 vaccine<\/a>. XFG is a combination of two other variants that have recombined: LF.7 and LP.8.1.2.<\/p>\n

It is growing globally. Samples of XFG sent to the global database of genetic virus sequences jumped from 7% of all COVID-19 samples in May 2025 to nearly 23% a few weeks later, according to WHO. Compared to the variant NB.1.8.1\u2014which is currently dominant in many countries, including in the U.S.\u2014XFG contains nine additional mutations in the spike protein.<\/p>\n

Vaccines seem to work against it<\/h2>\n

Scientists are currently studying how well people are protected against severe disease from XFG. Researchers\u00a0conducted lab studies<\/a>\u00a0using human cells and a “pseudovirus” stand-in for XFG, as well as animal studies, and found slightly lower immune responses to XFG.<\/p>\n

While the data aren’t complete yet, those results are encouraging since they suggest that existing vaccines used in the U.S., which\u00a0target JN.1<\/a>, should continue to provide some protection against severe disease and hospitalization\u2014even if it’s less robust than protection against the JN.1 variant specifically. WHO says the genetic analysis of XFG also shows that antiviral drugs nirmatrelvir (Paxlovid<\/a>) and remdesivir (Veklury) should also be effective.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Credit – Getty Images Alice Park 1\u00b72 min read   With\u00a0summer travel at an all-time high, new COVID-19<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":791,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions\/791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}