{"id":6967,"date":"2024-07-03T08:59:45","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T13:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=6967"},"modified":"2026-03-20T10:22:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T15:22:36","slug":"3-things-to-know-about-flirt-and-lb-1-the-new-coronavirus-strains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2024\/07\/03\/3-things-to-know-about-flirt-and-lb-1-the-new-coronavirus-strains\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Things to Know About FLiRT and LB.1, the New Coronavirus Strains"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yalemedicine.org\/news\/3-things-to-know-about-flirt-new-coronavirus-strains\">Yale Medicine<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The good news is that in the early spring of 2024,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.yalemedicine.org\/conditions\/covid-19\">COVID-19<\/a>&nbsp;cases were down, with far fewer infections and hospitalizations than were seen in the previous winter. But SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID, is still mutating, raising concerns about a potential wave of infections this summer. In April, a group of new virus strains known as the FLiRT variants (based on the technical names of their two mutations) began to spread, followed in June by a variant known as LB.1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The FLiRT strains are subvariants of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.yalemedicine.org\/news\/5-things-to-know-omicron\">Omicron<\/a>, and together they account for more than 60% of COVID cases in the U.S. (up from less than 5% in March). One of them, KP.3, accounted for 33.1% of COVID infections in the United States by the end of the first week of June; KP.2 made up 20.8%, and KP.1.1 accounted for 9% of cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The LB.1 strain is similar to the FLiRT variants, but with an additional mutation. As summer began, it was responsible for 17.5% of COVID cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, during the same period, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a significant COVID uptick in several states, based on spikes in emergency room visits and detections of the virus in wastewater. (Wastewater testing can help detect the spread of a COVID in a community.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cViruses mutate all the time, so I\u2019m not surprised to see a new coronavirus variant taking over,\u201d says Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.yalemedicine.org\/specialists\/scott-c-roberts\">Scott Roberts, MD<\/a>. If anything, he says the new mutations are confirmation that the SARS-CoV-2 virus remains a bit of a wild card, where it\u2019s always difficult to predict what it will do next. \u201cAnd I\u2019m guessing it will continue to mutate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yalemedicine.org\/news\/3-things-to-know-about-flirt-new-coronavirus-strains\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yale Medicine The good news is that in the early spring of 2024,&nbsp;COVID-19&nbsp;cases were down, with far fewer infections and hospitalizations than were seen in the previous winter. But SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID, is still mutating, raising concerns about a potential wave of infections this summer. In April, a group of new virus [&hellip;]<\/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-6967","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\/6967","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=6967"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11700,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6967\/revisions\/11700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}