Highly contagious new Covid variant HV.1 spreading across US: All you need to know

HV.1, the new highly contagious Covid-19 variant is sweeping through the United States. This variant is dominating other strains, including EG.5 aka Eris, which itself is the dominant strain worldwide.

HV.1 has been credited for more than a quarter of all COVID-19 cases since the end of October. According to the data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the variant was responsible for an estimated 25.2% of all the newly diagnosed cases during the two-week period ending on October 28.

Now, the officials have begun examining the variant in order to be able to deal with a possible winter surge.

Post HV.1, the most common variant in the states was EG.5, followed by FL.1.5.1 or Fornax and XBB.1.16 or Arcturus. All of the most prevalent COVID-19 strains in the US are offshoots of Omicron.

Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center said, “You can almost think of HV.1 as a grandchild of omicron,” in an interview with TODAY.com.

“The COVID family of viruses likes to mutate. We’ve all learned that by now. HV.1 is still very close to the existing omicron subvariants,” he added.

In late July, HV.1 accounted for just 0.5% of the COVID-19 cases, by September 30, it had risen up to 12.5% and now by November, it is the most dominant train in the US, as per CDC data.

Some of the symptoms defined for the HV.1 variant by Dr William are sore throat, congestion or stuffiness, runny nose, cough, headache, fatigue and muscle aches or chills.

While the variant has been spreading quite quickly, according to NBC News, scientists are not exceedingly worried about new variants like HV.1 as there exist some highly mutated strains that can be of more harm. These are BA.2.86 or Pirola, which has an extra 36 mutations that are distinctive from XBB.1.5 and JN.1, which has one more mutation than Pirola.

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