{"id":10657,"date":"2025-10-29T14:57:24","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T19:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=10657"},"modified":"2025-10-29T14:57:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T19:57:27","slug":"what-to-know-about-the-frankenstein-variant-of-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/10\/29\/what-to-know-about-the-frankenstein-variant-of-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"What to know about the ‘Frankenstein’ variant of COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Euronews<\/a> The currently dominant COVID-19 variant in Germany has been referred to as the ‘Frankenstein’ variant. Here’s why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As is the case every year, new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 are circulating in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Germany, the variant XFG is now dominant. It is often referred to in the media as the “Frankenstein variant” and is reported to cause a so-called “razor blade throat” as well as typical COVID-19 symptoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This variant bears the scientific name XFG, and is also called the “Stratus” variant. In Germany and other European countries, XFG has been increasingly dominant since mid-2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) consider XFG a “variant under monitoring” (VUM), meaning health officials are watching it closely but do not yet consider it a cause for concern.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Euronews The currently dominant COVID-19 variant in Germany has been referred to as the ‘Frankenstein’ variant. Here’s why. As is the case every year, new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 are circulating in Europe. In Germany, the variant XFG is now dominant. It is often referred to in the media as the “Frankenstein […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10657"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10658,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10657\/revisions\/10658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}