HV.1 and JN.1 Are New COVID-19 Variants Under Scrutiny
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With fall well under way and winter soon upon us, public health officials are expecting COVID-19 cases to climb, along with the flu and RSV.
Two COVID-19 variants now being closely monitored are HV.1 and JN.1.
During the week ending October 28, HV.1 rose to become the prevailing strain, accounting for just over one-quarter of all COVID-19 cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). EG.5, which had been dominant two weeks prior, has fallen to the No. 2 spot, making up about 22 percent of current infections.
As the COVID-19 virus continues to rapidly mutate, the CDC is also keeping close tabs on the emerging JN.1 variant, which was first detected in September 2023 in the United States, and has been spotted in 11 other countries.
Eric Topol, MD, the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, has said on X (formerly known as Twitter) that JN.1 is “separating from the pack” with possible enhanced contagiousness. He wrote in his Substack newsletter Ground Truths, however, that we won’t know for a few weeks as to whether JN.1 will be linked with a significant rise in cases or how much immune protection prior infection and vaccination will provide.
“What we do know is that both these variants appear to be highly transmissible but not the cause of more severe illness,” says William Schaffner, MD, professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
Dr. Schaffner notes that these variants could be viewed as the “grandchildren” of the omicron variant, and as such, he expects the latest vaccine formulation to prevent infected people from getting extremely sick and needing to be hospitalized.
Why JN.1 Is Getting Attention
As of the end of October, JN.1 has been detected so rarely that it makes up fewer than 0.1 percent of COVID infections in the United States, notes the CDC.
The variant, however, has shown a very fast growth rate in other parts of the world since it was first identified in Luxembourg at the end of August.
Shaun Truelove, PhD, an assistant scientist in the division of global disease epidemiology and control at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, highlights Iceland as an example. Here JN.1 has quickly spread to make up about 70 percent of COVID-19 infections, according to Dr. Truelove.
He further points out that JN.1 has a distinct mutation that may help it better evade immunity compared with previous strains.
“The virus is constantly evolving, constantly trying to escape whatever immunity we have,” says Truelove.
Vaccination Provides Strong Protection
As part of a multi-institution team that runs the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, Truelove expects the United States to see cases continue to rise in the weeks ahead with infections hitting a high in the first month of the new year.
“Every single January of this pandemic has been a seasonal peak,” he says. “It’s been extremely consistent. Although recents peaks have been dramatically lower than earlier in the pandemic, the numbers are still much larger than we experience with the flu every year.”
With that in mind, health authorities are encouraging the public to get the newest vaccine.
“The best thing we have to combat the virus is the vaccine,” says Schaffner. “Unfortunately, relatively few people have received it so far [7 percent of adults and 2 percent of children, per the CDC]. So I’m really worried about what will happen as a consequence of the holidays and all the travel and family gatherings.”
He underscores that the vaccine can be especially vital in protecting those most vulnerable, including the elderly and those who are immune-compromised (such as those who are getting chemotherapy for cancer or patients with rheumatic diseases who are taking monoclonal antibodies).
Truelove also encourages people to stay up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines because if you do still get infected, symptoms should be milder and not as long-lasting.
“You not only don’t want to be that one person who gets hospitalized or dies, you also don’t want to be the person who’s out of work for a week or out of school,” he says.
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