The coronavirus continues to mutate from its earlier strains with a rise in variants dubbed FLiRT by scientists in the US and Europe, as experts monitor vaccine effectiveness on the new strains
Health experts have raised concerns over a summer spike in Covid cases as new strains of the virus are spreading globally four-and-a-half years after the pandemic began.
Researchers at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have said that the new strains appear to have independently picked up the same set of mutations, but there is little evidence that they are more severe than their predecessors. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention report that the current dominant strain in the US is now KP.2 which accounted for 28.2 per cent of all cases in the two weeks to May 11.
Cases are also increasing in Europe with the new variant now detected in 14 countries. Cases remain limited in all reporting countries, the World Health Organisation said earlier this month, but there were "slight increases in detections from very low levels" in individual countries. "There is no change to the wider public health advice at this time," the UKHSA said in an update last week. A major wave of infections seems unlikely, health professionals said - with a low risk of a return to the early days of the pandemic when public immunity was lower.
World Health Organisation Centers For Disease Control And Prevention
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