FLiRT scares scientists. A new mutation of the coronavirus is more resistant to current vaccines

While the American Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered a new mutation by monitoring wastewater, according to the American newspaper USA Today, British scientists, according to The Mirror, are based on samples taken from patients during testing. According to the CDC, the FLiRT mutation made up about a quarter of all cases in the United States in the April samples, compared to around 17 percent in Britain.

Megan Ranney, a public health expert from the American Yale University, said that the new mutation is mainly characterized by changes in the spike protein, which is targeted by the current mRNA vaccines against the coronavirus. This makes FLiRT much more resistant to them than previous variants of SARS-CoV-2.

Photo: Miroslav Chaloupka, CTK

Employees of the Daikin company in Pilsen in respirators. Picture from October 2021 during one of the peaks of the coronavirus pandemic in the Czech Republic.

In addition, according to the CDC, only 22.6 percent of adults in the US reported receiving the 2023-24 updated covid vaccine as of September 2023.

“We have a population of people with declining immunity, which increases susceptibility to further mutations,” Thomas Russo, an infectious disease expert at the University at Buffalo, confirmed the CDC data.

Scientists fear that KP.2 and KP1.1 may soon become the dominant mutation worldwide. “As the virus spreads, it may become more difficult to stop it,” states the UK’s Health Safety Agency, according to The Mirror.

FLiRT added “brain fog”

Usually, covid-19 manifests itself as an upper respiratory tract infection, some patients develop pneumonia with a potentially serious, and in some cases, fatal course.

The first cases of this coronavirus in late 2019 were linked to a visit to a seafood and live animal market in the city of Wu-Chan. Later, a number of other hypotheses appeared, including the escape from the laboratories during experimentation.

The average incubation period is reported to be 4 to 5 days, with the range of incubation periods usually being reported up to 14 days. The basic mode of transmission is direct interpersonal contact.

Symptoms of covid-19 can include fever, fatigue, dry cough, joint pain, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, shortness of breath, loss or disturbance of smell or taste, vomiting, diarrhea. “Brain fog” is also reported for the FLiRT mutation. Patients report that in this state they felt less alert and aware of the situation around them.