Summer Covid variant sparks warning as cases surge across UK

Sarah HooperPublished Jun 22, 2024, 9:40am|Updated Jun 22, 2024, 3:38pm

The UK could see higher levels of hospitalisation due to a new Covid variant that’s spreading quickly.

Hospital admissions rose 24% in the last week alone, with many attributing the spike to new variant KP.3.

The variant is a subvariant of the highly contagious Omicron strain, and along with other variants makes up for over 69% of cases in the US.

In April, a group of new virus strains known as the FLiRT variants (based on the technical names of their two mutations) emerged.

KP.3, accounted for 33.1% of infections in the United States by June 8 – and now it’s hitting the UK.

Virologist Professor Lawrence Young of Warwick University told i: ‘This is a wakeup call. The virus hasn’t gone away and is certainly not a seasonal infection.

‘A combination of new, more infectious virus variants and waning immunity is very likely contributing to these increased levels of infection.

‘The hope is that this will not result in a big wave of infection but we need to keep a close watch.’

The UK Health Security Agency said in May: ‘UKHSA is continuing to monitor data relating to new variants both in the UK and internationally, assessing their severity and the ongoing effectiveness of vaccines. There is no change to the wider public health advice at this time.

‘At these early stages our scientists at the Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre (VDEC) are busy growing a stock of the JN.1 variant in our high containment facilities, so that we can begin testing.’

In March, a new study concluded that Covid-19 most likely originated in a lab.

The origin of the pandemic has long been contentious. Some believe the virus was a ‘zoonotic spillover event’ and spread from animals to humans, possibly at the wet market in Wuhan, China, where the disease was first reported.

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