Research: Fast-growing subvariants may evade some less-common treatments

The Virginia Department of Health is following research on two subvariants of COVID because of potential abilities to evade some treatments.

Omicron subvariant cases of BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 are the some of the most rapidly growing share of newly confirmed COVID19 cases, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the week ending Sept. 24, BQ.1 was only 1.2% of the confirmed cases and by the week ending Saturday, it comprised 14% of the new cases, while over the same roughly one month period, the share of weekly new COVID cases for BQ.1.1 rose from 0.5% to 13%.

“Preliminary data suggest these subvariants may, we don’t know, they may have the ability to get around a couple of our medications,” said Dr. Brooke Rossheim with the Virginia Department of Health.

VDH is on calls with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services every week and the subject of variants potential impact on the effectiveness of certain drugs has been discussed, Rossheim said.

The early research shows these variants could hamper a monoclonal treatment,

Bebtelovimab, and a pre-exposure monoclonal cocktail called Evusheld — but the CDC has not released anything, nor has Rossheim heard, suggesting the subvariants can evade more commonly prescribed antivirals, such as Paxlovid or remdesivir or the COVID19 vaccine at a higher rate, according to Rossheim.

“That’s really unknown territory at this point,” he said.

Evusheld is in a category all its own and there used to be post-exposure prophylaxis treatments available, Rossheim said.

“We really lost them bit by bit because it was found that Omicron was capable of evading the action of the drug and then what you saw is the FDA pull their authorization for the post-exposure prophylaxis monoclonal antibodies,” Rossheim said.

He said there are a lot of eyes looking at the changing landscape for subvariants and if a decision about the emergency use authorization of the two drugs is made, it will come after enough research is done on the impacts of BQ.1 and BQ.1.1.

“Until we see action by FDA, it is basically business as usual,” Rossheim said.