‘The virus wants to live.’ California’s big COVID spike isn’t expected to ease anytime soon
"With COVID-19 numbers in California spiking this summer, experts are warning the new strains driving the spread could be around for some time.
"The latest COVID summertime surge is being fueled by what have collectively been dubbed the FLiRT subvariants — a collection of highly transmissible sibling strains that have muscled their way to prominence both in California and nationwide. In doing so, they’ve supplanted last winter’s dominant strain, JN.1, and are presenting new challenges to immune systems not yet primed to keep them at bay.
“It does seem like we are spitting out more and more variants a lot more quickly, and that’s probably to be expected,” said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious disease at Kaiser Permanente Southern California. “This virus is still very, very new to humans, and the virus wants to live, and the way that it lives is by evading immunity” — circumventing people’s defenses by evolving in a way to keep the chain of infection going.
"And data show the collective FLiRT family is making itself known in a major way.
"Here is a closer look at where California stands with COVID and how to protect yourself.
"There are quite a few FLiRT variants, which are descendants of last winter’s dominant strain, JN.1. Toward the end of spring, around Memorial Day weekend, that moniker largely applied to just a trio of distinct strains — officially designated KP.1.1, KP.2 and KP.3.
"But just when it appeared that those three might be the showstoppers of the summer, an alphabet soup of additional potential threats emerged: KP.3.1.1, KP.2.3, KP.1.1.3, KP.4.1, and KP.1.2.
"Of all of them, KP.3.1.1 is most clearly on the rise. For the two-week period that ended July 20, KP.3.1.1 comprised 17.7% of samples nationwide, up from 6.8% for the prior two-week period, according to estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"KP.3.1.1 “has really taken off,” Hudson said.
"By contrast, the older KP.3 has stagnated. Its share of coronavirus samples was estimated to be 32.9% for the two-week period that ended July 20, down slightly from 33.7% over the prior two-week period.
"Those latest CDC estimates mean it’s possible that KP.3.1.1 could be “taking over for the next two or three weeks,” Hudson said Friday. “So, unfortunately, I think we are going to see a lot more cases.”
"Yep. But the coronavirus that causes COVID — officially known as SARS-CoV-2 — is still very new to humans and hasn’t settled into the more predictable pattern that public health officials might be aware of for other infectious diseases, such as the flu.
'Since emerging in late 2019, the coronavirus has continually evolved in ways meant to evade immune protection. The strains best positioned to infect as many people as possible eventually rise to prominence, a trend that has played out previously in the pandemic with the rise of the Delta and Omicron variants, both of which triggered devastating surges.
"As humans gain protection against any particular variant — such as through an updated vaccination or surviving an infection — the virus will seek to evolve in a way to keep the chain of infection going.
“And it may be that this particular summer, we have just seen a lot more of a faster churn of some of the variants, and they’ve just been a little bit more infective,” Hudson said.
"It’s also true that, with this being the fifth summer of the COVID era, many people have thrown caution to the wind, and many sick people are continuing to go about their lives without masking or other precautions — allowing the virus to more efficiently spread. "
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There's more, which you can read here, but hopefully other states will learn from California's experience and do more to protect its residents.
Pretending COVID has disappeared is obviously not working.
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