“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
– President Donald Trump, 2020 and other times.
In the past two weeks I have learned of two different clusters of family and friends, yes other than the Bidens, who have tested positive for COVID. Since I didn’t think that people were even still testing themselves for COVID, I went to the net to see what was happening. Lo and behold, there is a “summer surge” of three new COVID subvariants in 39 states. The subvariants are mutations of our familiar Omicron COVID virus, and are lumped together under the moniker of “FLiRT”. I initially assumed that CDC virologists had hired Big Pharma’s namers of new drugs, but it turns out that FLiRT merely refers to the mutation locations on Omicron’s protein spikes. FLiRT subvariants are now the dominant COVID strain in the U.S.
The modest rise in positive tests has been happening slowly, but steadily, since a low point in May. In Massachusetts there were 1481 new cases in June 2024 compared to 658 new cases in April. (There were nearly 7,000 new cases in December 2023.) The uptick in cases is more apparent in our western and southern states. Florida has had the steepest increase in COVID ER visits, nursing home cases, and positive wastewater tests. There have been small upticks globally as well. Elsewhere in the U.S. there is the the same slight uptick of positive COVID virus tests in wastewater from the sewage treatment plants that can test for it. The nationwide rate of new cases is about 12%.
This summer uptick is apparently NOT surprising to infectious disease experts. COVID infections have shown a 6 month cycle with both a winter and a summer surge since 2020. The reasons for the summer surge are not fully understood, but some experts speculate that the very hot weather which leads to people gathering indoors in air-conditioned rooms and even in community “cooling centers” may play a role.
So far, the new subvariants are considered to be more infectious, even with asymptomatic people, than previous ones, but they appear to cause less severe symptoms. ER visits due to COVID have increased only 4% and hospital admissions remain very low. But FLiRT infection can be a bit different because of more prominent GI symptoms like transient diarrhea and/or vomiting. (Of course, Paxlovid, an oral treatment for COVID, is known to sometimes cause diarrhea.)
Although FLiRT is causing less severe symptoms the CDC is recommending that everyone over 6 months old, and especially those over 65 years old, get the new 2024-2025 COVID vaccine (targeted against the new variants) once it is available in September. People with long COVID are particularly strong advocates for increased vaccine compliance since they are at a higher risk of increased symptoms from re-exposure to the COVID virus. Long COVID has become less common than in the earlier pandemic, but we know that even mild cases can lead to long COVID syndromes.
“Viruses mutate all the time, so I’m not surprised to see a new coronavirus variant taking over,” says Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist Scott Roberts, MD. If anything, he says the new mutations are confirmation that the SARS-CoV-2 virus remains a bit of a wild card, where it’s always difficult to predict what it will do next. “And I’m guessing it will continue to mutate.”
So stay home if you’re sick, keep washing your hands a lot, don’t be surprised to see some people wearing masks at the next indoor concert you go to. . . and get vaccinated . . . again . . . in the fall.
HUB's LIST of medical fun facts 