New Nimbus COVID-19 variant — What you need to know
SALT LAKE CITY () — With reports of a new variant of COVID-19 out there, it's important to remain informed and prepare. Public health experts are saying that the new Nimbus variant is more contagious, and they're recommending COVID boosters.
The official name of the new variant is NB.1.8.1, but it has been nicknamed Nimbus.
ABC4.com spoke with Dr. Kelly Oakeson, Chief Scientist for Next Generation Sequencing and Bioinformatics at the Utah Public Health Lab with the Utah Department of Health about what you need to know about this new COVID-19 variant.
According to Dr. Oakeson, the CDC is predicting that the Nimbus variant makes up anywhere from 38-50% of the current COVID cases in the United States. He also said that we've seen it in Utah, through a handful of clinical cases, and it's been detected in wastewater.
As we have seen with previous variants, new mutations have made the virus more transmissible.
'It's better at attaching to our cells and infecting our cells and making us sick, but it also has mutations as well that help us avoid our immune response, right?' Dr. Oakeson explained. 'It has ways of avoiding our antibodies that we have built up against COVID, either from vaccination or from infection.'
Symptoms are similar to current COVID symptoms: cough, fatigue, fever, loss of taste and smell, etc., he said.
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What can you do to protect yourself? Dr. Oakeson recommended the same measures people have been taking all along to protect themselves against COVID.
'If you're not feeling well, stay in bed, rest up. If you have to go out and you're going to be in large places, put a mask on,' Dr Oakeson said. 'We know these N95, these surgical masks do a good job at helping prevent spread of respiratory viruses.'
She also recommended getting a COVID booster if you haven't yet.
'If you got one last fall, and depending on your health status, you're probably okay. There are recommendations for people that are immunosuppressed or immunocompromised to get boosters more often,' he explained.
If you haven't gotten a booster in the past year, Dr. Oakeson said that it's probably time to go out and get one. The formulation of the newest booster will provide some protection against the new variant, he said.
From a public health perspective, Dr. Oakeson said that the biggest concern is a summer surge, where large groups of people would be infected, putting pressure on hospital systems.
'We tend to see COVID come in waves, you know, in the summer and then again in the winter, so we're keeping an eye out to see how that wave crests here as cases start increasing,' he said.
New Nimbus COVID-19 variant — What you need to know
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