FLiRT is the term used to describe a whole family of new variants (including the dominant KP.2 variant) of the SARS-Cov-2 virus which predominate in the United States and are emerging in Europe.
The latter are distant relatives of Omicron. They are nicknamed “FLiRT” based on the technical names of the different mutations, one of which includes the letters “F” and “L”, and another the letters “R” and “T”.
Should we expect a summer wave of Covid-19?
Quoted by Time Magazine, Dr. Eric Topol, executive vice president of the American biomedical research center Scripps Researchwho wrote about the FLiRT variants explains that “ if it is still too early to say (…) KP.2 and its relatives will probably cause an increase in the number of cases, but (my) intuition is that it will not be a big wave. »
Classic symptoms
For Topol, “ the virus has not mutated enough to become significantly different from previous strains “. Thus, according to researchers at the university Johns–Hopkins of Baltimore, regarding symptoms, “ we don’t see anything new or different. We continue to see mild illnesses. This is probably not because the virus is milder, but because our immunity is now much stronger. After years of vaccinations and infections, most of the population is better able to fight off infection “.
Same story from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC in Atlanta): “ FLiRT does not cause more severe disease than other variants. »
