A latest offshoot strain, XBB.1.5, of the COVID-19 Omicron variant has been found to have “alarming” immunity evasion, which could cause one other surge of cases in america, in keeping with experts.

Dr. David Ho, professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, said the XBB.1 offshoot variant is 63 times less more likely to be neutralized by the antibodies in individuals who have either been infected by COVID-19 or have been vaccinated against the virus when put next to the BA.2 variant. The identical is the case with the XBB.1.5 strain.

“It’s alarming that these newly emerged subvariants could further compromise the efficacy of current COVID-19 vaccines and lead to a surge of breakthrough infections in addition to re-infections,” Dr. Ho wrote in his findings, which were recently published within the journal Cell.

Along with its high immune evasion, the XBB.1.5. also has a key mutation at site 486, allowing it to bind higher to ACE2, which is the door the virus uses to enter human cells. This mutation means the offshoot variant is more infectious.

“The mutation is clearly letting XBB.1.5 spread higher,” Jesse Bloom, a computational virologist on the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, wrote in an email to CNN.

Experts at the moment are warning that the strain’s features could give it the flexibility to cause one other surge of COVID-19 cases within the U.S.

As of Friday last week, the U.S. Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that the XBB.1.5 variant accounted for 41% of latest COVID-19 infections throughout December.

In northeastern states, the CDC said the offshoot variant is causing about 75.3% of all latest cases. Those states include Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Recent Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.

In Recent York and Recent Jersey, the XBB.1.5 strain caused 72.2% of cases through the last week of December.

As of Tuesday, the U.S. reported a complete of 100,845,043 COVID-19 cases because the pandemic began in 2020. Amongst those, 1,093,971 have died of the virus, in keeping with data from Johns Hopkins University.