{"id":9234,"date":"2025-04-16T10:22:50","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T15:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=9234"},"modified":"2025-04-16T10:22:52","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T15:22:52","slug":"a-new-covid-variant-is-on-the-rise-heres-what-to-know-about-lp-8-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/04\/16\/a-new-covid-variant-is-on-the-rise-heres-what-to-know-about-lp-8-1\/","title":{"rendered":"A new COVID variant is on the rise. Here\u2019s what to know about\u00a0LP.8.1"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/a-new-covid-variant-is-on-the-rise-heres-what-to-know-about-lp-8-1-253237\">The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More than five years since COVID was&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/europe\/emergencies\/situations\/covid-19\">declared a pandemic<\/a>, we\u2019re still facing the regular emergence of new variants of the virus, SARS-CoV-2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The latest variant on the rise is LP.8.1. It\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.health.gov.au\/resources\/collections\/australian-respiratory-surveillance-reports-2025\">increasing in Australia<\/a>, making up close to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.health.nsw.gov.au\/Infectious\/covid-19\/Documents\/respiratory-surveillance-20250322.pdf\">one in five COVID cases<\/a>&nbsp;in New South Wales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Elsewhere it\u2019s become even more dominant, comprising at least three in five cases&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/inews.co.uk\/news\/health\/lp-covid-variant-cases-future-waves-3598768\">in the United Kingdom<\/a>, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what is LP.8.1? And is it cause for concern? Let\u2019s look at what we know so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">An offshoot of Omicron<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>LP.8.1 was first&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/publications\/m\/item\/risk-evaluation-for-sars-cov-2-variant-under-monitoring-lp81\">detected in July 2024<\/a>. It\u2019s a descendant of Omicron, specifically of KP.1.1.3, which is descended from&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/the-emergence-of-jn-1-is-an-evolutionary-step-change-in-the-covid-pandemic-why-is-this-significant-220285\">JN.1<\/a>, a subvariant that caused large waves of COVID infections around the world in late 2023 and early 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/activities\/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants\">World Health Organization<\/a>&nbsp;(WHO) designated LP.8.1 as a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/publications\/m\/item\/risk-evaluation-for-sars-cov-2-variant-under-monitoring-lp81\">variant under monitoring<\/a>&nbsp;in January. This was in response to its significant growth globally, and reflects that it has genetic changes which may allow the virus to spread more easily and pose a greater risk to human health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/a-new-covid-variant-is-on-the-rise-heres-what-to-know-about-lp-8-1-253237\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Conversation More than five years since COVID was&nbsp;declared a pandemic, we\u2019re still facing the regular emergence of new variants of the virus, SARS-CoV-2. The latest variant on the rise is LP.8.1. It\u2019s&nbsp;increasing in Australia, making up close to&nbsp;one in five COVID cases&nbsp;in New South Wales. Elsewhere it\u2019s become even more dominant, comprising at least [&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-9234","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\/9234","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=9234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9235,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9234\/revisions\/9235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}