Scientists are divided on how big an effect the new variants will have following four months of the lowest infection levels seen for three years
0.9 per cent of the population in England and Scotland – less than 1 in 100 – had Covid in mid-February, compared to 4.6 per cent in late December variants is spreading fast, putting the UK at risk of a fresh wave of infections in the coming weeks, scientists warn.At the moment, the new variants appear to be largely replacing JN.1 rather than driving up Covid cases overall – which remain at around three year lows.
“It is likely we are about to enter a new wave of infections due to the global increase of new subvariants of the current dominant variant JN.1,” said Professor Christina Pagel, of University College London. The FLiRT variants involve two key mutations from the JN.1 virus which mean it can spread more easily.
That’s because the new subvariants are not as different from their ‘parents’ than some previous subvariants were from theirs, while the two mutations have been around before, earlier in the pandemic, in some previous variants – but not since JN.1 became the dominant variant. Other scientists agree there is a risk that FLiRT could cause a spike in cases – although there is a good deal of uncertainty about whether this will happen and how big any outbreak may be, other than that is is likely to be smaller than the last wave.
Professor Eric Topol, of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California, believes FLiRT could deliver “a wavelet but not a significant new wave of infections”.
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