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How worried should we be about the new COVID variants?
The national COVID-19 emergency ended just over a year ago. Gov. Gavin Newsom terminated California’s emergency orders at the end of February 2023. But coronavirus is still out there — now in more variants and subvariants. The newest ones causing concern are officially known as KP.2, KP.3 and KP.1.1 but have been given the nickname FLiRT (an acronym for the amino acid changes that led to the strains’ mutations).
The latest data show that those subvariants are the dominant COVID family in the U.S., jumping from about 20% of infections a month ago to more than 50%.
State health officials say summer could bring an uptick in cases following a low-transmission spring.
“COVID-19 concentrations in wastewater have suggested increases in several regions across California since early May,” the state Department of Public Health said in a statement last week. “Test positivity for COVID-19 has been slowly increasing since May.”
Travelers at Los Angeles International Airport.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Health officials won’t be surprised to see increased COVID cases this summer, just as we’ve experienced in previous summers. We travel more, congregate on weekends and holidays and tend to gather inside to escape the heat.
So how worried should we be? The Times’ Rong-Gong Lin II provided some context in his reporting this week:
“Despite their increased transmissibility, the new mutations don’t appear to result in more severe disease. And the vaccine is expected to continue working…