The XEC COVID variant is in the U.S. A UT infectious disease specialist says there's likely no need to panic, as the strain is similar to existing ones.

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to evolve, a new variant known as the Covid XEC variant is starting to spread rapidly across Europe, North America, and parts of Asia. First identified in Germany in June,

XEC’s prevalence is lower in the US and Canada and reached a high of 5.96% in European cases on 19 August. Slovenia had high rates of infection with the variant in August with over 10 per cent of samples from the country containing XEC.