New COVID Variant Dominant In China Showing Up: What To Know In PA

PENNSYLVANIA — A new variant of COVID-19 dominant in China is circulating in other parts of the world, including the United States, and it could affect Pennsylvania residents, some health officials warn.

The World Health Organization said the variant, called NB.1.8.1, is primarily on the rise in the eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, and western Pacific regions. U.S. airport screenings detected it in travelers arriving from those regions to destinations in California, Washington state, Virginia, and New York. A handful of states — Rhode Island, Ohio, and Arizona — have reported NB.1.8.1 cases.

However, experts say the variant could take hold because it’s been a while since the U.S. saw a COVID wave, lowering protection from having had it, and because less than a quarter of U.S. adults are current on their vaccinations and boosters.

“It may unfortunately come back with a little bit of vengeance on us. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen, but I am concerned that we may be setting ourselves up for that with this combination of factors,” Dr. Thomas Russo, chief of infectious diseases at the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, told ABC News.

According to the CDC, an estimated 14.3 percent of adults in Pennsylvania are vaccinated for the 2024-25 season. Additionally, officials estimate 4.4 percent of Pennsylvanians 6 months old to 17 years old are vaccinated for COVID this season.

CDC data shows nearly 57,000 Pennsylvanians have died from COVID. As of May 17, the total number of Pennsylvanians who succumbed to the virus is 56,988.

The new variant is yet another of the hundreds of descendant subvariants of the omicron variant, detected in 2021. None has led to the rise in COVID cases seen during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Although the currently available vaccine is effective against the new variant, some of its mutations could make it more difficult to treat, according to the WHO.

The variant also appears to be more transmissible than the current dominant strain, LP.8.1, both in the United States and worldwide. It could easily exploit waning immunity, Dr. Todd Ellerin, chief of infectious diseases at South Shore Health, told ABC News.

“Remember, we’ve seen summer surges,” he said. “One thing that COVID has done is it's been able to surge in the summer, and it’s been able to surge in the winter, and that’s very different than respiratory viruses we’ve dealt with in the past. But we still don't know if this is going to be the virus that leads to a summer surge, it's just too early to know.”

There is no evidence to suggest NB.1.8.1 causes more severe illnesses than other circulating variants.

“It’s an important one to track, but it doesn’t show any signs so far of being able to drive a large surge in COVID-19 cases — at least in the U.S.,” Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told NBC News.

There hasn’t been enough activity for NB.1.8.1 to show up on the Centers for Disease Control’s COVID dashboard. A spokesperson for the agency told NBC there have been fewer than 20 sequences of the variant reported in the U.S. to date.

“Whether it gets a foothold in this country and it becomes our new dominant variant or not remains to be seen,” the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences’ Russo told NBC.

The variant arrives as the United States’ official stance on COVID-19 vaccination is changing. On Tuesday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that COVID-19 shots are no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women — a move immediately questioned by several public health experts.

See what that means for Pennsylvanians here.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.