Daily Mail News – Science
By MATTHEW PHELAN SENIOR SCIENCE REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 08:36 EDT, 9 May 2024 | UPDATED: 09:25 EDT, 9 May 2024
The latest Covid variants nicknamed ‘FLiRT’ are sweeping the nation after mutating the virus in a way that it evades the human immune systems.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) detected KP.1.1 and KP.2 variants in wastewater sampling, finding the latter made up about a quarter of new Covid cases last month.
But an infectious disease doctor has now told DailyMail.com that these new mutations, which alter the ‘spike proteins’ of the coronavirus, also appear to make the pandemic illness less capable of penetrating and infecting human cells.