A woman wears a face mask to protect against COVID-19 on April 7, 2024 in London, United Kingdom.
Mike Kemp | In pictures | Getty Images
LONDON – New strains of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) are spreading globally, raising concerns among health workers about a potential spike in infections over the summer, four and a half years after the pandemic began.
FLiRT variants – whose name is derived from the names of mutations in the variants' genetic code – are on the rise in the United States and Europe as the coronavirus continues to mutate from previous strains.
The new group is a descendant of the previously dominant JN.1 variant, an offshoot of Omicron. There is currently little evidence that the new strains are more dangerous, but they appear to have independently picked up the same set of mutations, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
KP.2 is now the dominant strain in the United States, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The strain accounted for 28.2% of all cases in the two weeks ending May 11, up from 3.8% at the end of March, shortly after the strain was first detected.
Cases of the KP.1.1 strain, another variant of the FLiRT virus, have also risen to account for 7.1% of current infections, the agency said.
In Europe, infection cases have also increased, as the new strain has now been discovered in 14 countries.
The World Health Organization said in its latest update earlier this month that cases remain limited in all reporting countries. However, individual countries show “small increases in detections at very low levels.”
Last week, the UK's Health Security Agency said it was continuing to monitor data on new variants in the UK and internationally, assessing their severity and the ongoing effectiveness of vaccines. “There is no change to broader public health advice at this time,” the agency said in an update.
Jennifer Horney, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Delaware, said it currently seems unlikely that the new variants will cause a large wave of infection as seen in the past when public immunity was lower. But she noted that the new variants are likely to lead to a slight increase in cases during the coming summer months.
“Although our idea of what a wave of COVID-19 infections looks like has changed over the course of the pandemic, these new variants will likely cause a surge in cases in the United States over the next few months,” Horney said. he told CNBC via email.
“A lot of it will be mild, based on our current immunity and not changes in the strain circulating,” she said.
However, health workers will be watching closely to see how effective current vaccines are against the new variants.
Next month, the US Food and Drug Administration's Vaccine Advisory Committee will meet to discuss recommendations for the variable combination of this winter's Covid-19 vaccine, after postponing a previous discussion to collect more data.
