COVID: Early Warnings about the FLiRT variants.
There is an early indication that KP.2 is causing trouble in the UK. Here is positivity over the pandemic using PCR for the area.
The US is just slightly behind the UK in the rise of dominance of it.
As a general thumb rule, I’ve noticed that hospitalizations tend to start rising rapidly when a variant reaches about the 40% mark of all variants in a country, so it will be interesting to watch what happens when the UK crosses that threshold. Currently the downward trend in COVID hospitalizations seems to have hit a plateau, suggesting that this estimate may prove to be correct again.
The forecast for KP.2 in the US also suggests that we are going to be following that trajectory.
One of the problems with the new variants is a distinct growth advantage over JN.1. That will be the case for each variant to become dominant. Almost by definition, it has to have a spread advantage over those before it in order for it to gain dominance.
The advantage of KP.2 and KP.3 has been worked out by the Murrell Group in comparing to the JN.1 variant.
Some preliminary data suggests that these variants may also be more immune evasive, but fortunately less infectious. However, the lower number of COVID hospitalizations in the US during the past year compared to the rest of the pandemic suggests a lower number of infections, which may be due to prior infection or vaccination.
We know that immunity from both infection and from vaccination wanes over time. Given the low uptake of the most recent booster and the large proportions of those who were infected who don’t build antibodies, we have a large proportion of the population in the US that might be considered to be immune naive, especially in the context of a more immune evasive variant.
I would still advocate for a booster if you can get one because data with influenza suggests even when there is not a good match, there is still some protection provided from vaccine. However, all of this also emphasizes the need for good respiratory protection with a respirator as well as improved ventilation.
Of course, it doesn’t help that Republican lawmakers are trying to criminalize mask use even for medical purposes. It’s no surprise though given that they have been the instruments of disease and death for some time.
It also doesn’t help that the CDC seems to be sweeping COVID under the rug with the lifting of the healthcare reporting requirements on May 1 as well as removing the link to those data sets right on the front page of the healthdata.gov website. It used to say “COVID-19 Datasets” in the area indicated by the red arrow. I estimate that next weekend we will start to see the drop in reporting in the data, although since it happened midweek, it will be the following weekend when the scale of this change becomes most apparent.
