FLiRT COVID-19 Variant On The Rise In US: Here’s All You Need To Know About It

New COVID-19 Variants FLiRT On The Rise In US: Here's All You Need To Know About It — FLiRT COVID-19 Variant On The Rise In US: Here’s All You Need To Know About It

A new group of COVID-19 variants termed as FLiRT is at large in the US and here’s all the information that you need.

USA is witnessing a rise in a new family of COVID-19 variants and the scientists have name it FLiRT. These variants doing a round in the country are from the lineage of the Omicron variants according to reports. But they are also the derivatives of the JN.1 variant which had affected the country at the start of this year. The FLiRT group of variants have been named so by experts in order to include all of them together. Each letter F, L, R and T represents each of the variants. Among the four new variants, one of them may be the most concerning, says reports. This is the KP.2 variant. The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data suggests that, almost 25 percent of the cases reported in the two weeks of April were from KP.2 variant.

Concerns Around FLiRT variants

There is still a lot of research required on these new group of FLiRT variants and they are underway, reported researchers. Dr. Eric Topol, Executive Vice President at Scripps Research spoke to the Times, US and said that, the variant that is at large in the US is KP.2 variant from the family of FLiRT variants however, it may be too early to speculate the possible dangers that may emanate from this variant.

CDC also reported that, the amount of COVID-19 viruses in the US wastewater is not a lot and they termed it as ‘minimal’. Cases had peaked in the month of January this year but right now, the rate of hospitalisation due to COVID and deaths due to COVID have also began to decline in the country, which is a good sign. At the global level, case counts rose from early to mid-April, but remain far lower than they were a few months ago.

What Do The Experts Speculate?

Topol further added this in his statement to the Times, US, the KP.2 variant may cause a surge in cases in the country however, the surge will not be massive. It might just be a “wavelet”, he said. He also explains why this is so. People who have already been infected at least once by the COVID-19 variants have built their immunity against any future variants. The KP.2 variants and other variants have also not mutated enough to cause a huge spike. They are almost the same as the previous strains of COVID-19.

Aside from all these speculation, there is one catch about this new variant. A new study conducted in Japan and China revealed that, this family of variants FLiRT may be more equipped at dodging the immune protection that vaccines have been offering to the human bodies. Reports say that it may be better at dodging that the JN.1 variant. This makes it a possible danger to the country and the people.