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Vaccine Injuries Deserve More Attention, Says Vaccinologist + More
Vaccine Injuries Deserve More Attention, Says Vaccinologist
More empathy — and investment — is needed to address vaccine-related injuries, says Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire.
Corbett-Helaire, assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases, was one of the developers of the COVID-19 vaccine. On the July 17 episode of STAT News’ First Opinion podcast, she discussed her experience working on the vaccine, her path to a career in science, and her approach to being a role model as a Black woman in science.
She also talked about her June 11 opinion piece in STAT, in which she wrote that she believes more empathy is needed for people who report experiencing long-term side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine.
In the STAT piece, Corbett-Helaire listed concrete steps that everyone in the vaccine field — herself included — should take. These steps include establishing a better system through which people can report vaccine-related injuries; creating and widely distributing guidelines for healthcare providers to better communicate with and care for patients who experience these injuries; and conducting more and deeper scientific investigations into these injuries. Such investigations, she added on the podcast, would not hamper further development of vaccines. Rather, they would further the quality and effectiveness of vaccines, as well as bolster public trust.
How to Reduce the Risk of a Catastrophic Lab Accident
It’s been about a century since viruses were recognized as causing devastating human diseases. Since then, scientists and public health experts have diligently tried to reduce the threats they pose by developing vaccines and treatments, improving ventilation and more.
So it was stunning when, in 2012, scientists published papers describing how they had done the opposite: They had genetically engineered highly lethal avian flu viruses to make them more contagious between mammals, potentially including humans.
The researchers said they pursued this work to deepen their scientific understanding of avian influenza. We were among the many experts around the world who objected to their research. The risk of an accidental or deliberate pandemic emerging from these enhanced viruses far outweighed any potential scientific benefit.
The potential role of a laboratory accident in causing the COVID pandemic remains uncertain and widely debated. But what is clear is that we still urgently need stronger government oversight of risky virus research.
Walgreens Receives $25 Million BARDA Grant for COVID Vaccine Trial
Walgreens has received $25 million in grant funding to conduct a decentralized clinical trial assessing how well a person vaccinated against COVID-19 is protected from future infections.
The award funding comes from a consortium funded by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), embedded in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The partnership is BARDA’s first with a major retail pharmacy.
Walgreens will conduct a phase IV observational clinical study, using COVID vaccine data, to assess correlates of protection, known as responses to a vaccine that predict how well a vaccinated person will be protected from future infections, using COVID-19 vaccine data.
The initiative’s goal is to increase access to clinical trials. Currently, participants in a vaccine clinical trial often travel to hospitals, universities or other central locations that are far from their homes. Taking a decentralized approach through a geographically diverse retailer like Walgreens can help reach patients where they are and enable the collection of real-world data, the organizations said. The partners also hope that learning what aspects of decentralized clinical trials work for vaccine correlates of protection studies can help drive future studies at scale.
Modified Self-Amplifying RNA Provides Opportunities for New Vaccines and Treatments
A paper published on July 8, 2024, in the journal Nature Biotechnology presents promising data that offers a foundation for developing future vaccines and treatments. Researchers Joshua McGee, lead author, senior authors Mark Grinstaff, Wilson Wong, and Florian Douam and other colleagues from Boston University solved a longstanding challenge with self-amplifying RNA.
They used modified building blocks, called NTPs to build their saRNA. Once they established proof of concept in cells, they tested their method in vaccinated mice against a SARS-CoV-2 lethal challenge. Their vaccine yielded much higher antibody levels and better protection against the challenge than a similar mRNA-based vaccine.
Most readers are aware that messenger RNA technology was used in the vaccines given to protect against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Reviewing some of the basics, our genetic material is encoded in DNA. In order to make vital proteins in the body, such as enzymes to run cellular functions or to build tissue, cells translate DNA into mRNA and mRNA into proteins. Both DNA and RNA are made up of building blocks, called NTPs.
There are a couple of challenges with mRNA vaccines. First, they cause a robust immune response, which can be assessed by measuring interferon levels. This robust response limits the amount of time that they remain viable, which in turn reduces the amount of protein that they can crank out, prompting the need for additional booster doses of the vaccines. Second, mRNA has a short half-life and requires high doses. The high doses coupled with a robust immune response can lead to inflammation and unappealing side effects, such as fever, body aches, and fatigue that many of us have experienced. Third, the mRNA carries only a single cargo and thus only codes for a single protein of interest.
The Current COVID Variant You Should Know About: What the CDC Is Saying About KP.3.1.1
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now monitoring the COVID-19 variant KP.3.1.1 as it edges close to KP.3.
The government agency’s Nowcast data tracker showed the projections of the COVID-19 variants for a two-week period starting on July 7 and ending on July 20. The KP.3 variant accounted for 32.9% of positive infections, followed by KP.3.1.1, at 17.7%. Combined, the two variants make up 50.6% of cases.
The KP.3.1.1 COVID-19 variant is a strain that is the second most prevalent at the national, regional and state level, according to the CDC‘s Nowcast data tracker.
“We are predicting that the most prevalent lineages currently are KP.3, KP.3.1.1, KP.2.3 and LB.1, a sublineage of JN.1,” said CDC Spokesperson Rosa Norman. “All these lineages are descendants of JN.1 and have similar spike proteins.”
China’s Philippines Embassy Demands Answers for Propaganda Against COVID Vaccine
The Chinese embassy in the Philippines said on Monday the United States should give an explanation to the Filipino people as soon as possible for its false propaganda against China’s COVID-19 vaccine.
The remarks centered around a Reuters investigative report that said the U.S. military launched a clandestine program during the COVID pandemic to discredit China’s Sinovac inoculation in the Philippines.
A spokesperson for China’s embassy said the U.S. should immediately correct its “erroneous practices, stop using lies to confuse the world, stop slandering and smearing other countries.”
‘Unusual’ Cancers Emerged After Pandemic. Doctors Ask if COVID Is to Blame. + More
‘Unusual’ Cancers Emerged After Pandemic. Doctors Ask if COVID Is to Blame.
It was 2021, a year into the coronavirus pandemic, and as he slid into a chair, Kashyap Patel shared that he’d just seen a patient in his 40s with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and lethal cancer of the bile ducts that typically strikes people in their 70s and 80s. Initially, there was silence, and then one colleague after another said they’d recently treated patients who had similar diagnoses. Within a year of that meeting, the office had recorded seven such cases.
“I’ve been in practice 23 years and have never seen anything like this,” Patel, CEO of Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates, later recalled. Asutosh Gor, another oncologist, agreed: “We were all shaken.”
There was other weirdness, too: multiple patients contending with multiple types of cancer arising almost simultaneously, and more than a dozen new cases of other rare cancers.
The uptick in aggressive, late-stage cancers since the dawn of the pandemic is confirmed by some early national data and a number of large cancer institutions. Many experts have mostly dismissed the trend as an expected consequence of disruptions to healthcare that began in 2020.
Birx Says U.S. Making ‘Same Mistakes’ With Bird Flu as COVID
Deborah Birx, a physician who served as former President Trump’s coronavirus response coordinator, warned that the United States is making the “same mistakes” with the bird flu as it did with COVID-19.
“This is why I’m really concerned because we’re making the same mistakes today that we made with COVID. And what do I mean by that? We’re not testing to really see how many people have been exposed and got asymptomatically infected,” Birx told CNN’s Kasie Hunt on Tuesday.
Birx served as the coronavirus response coordinator in Trump’s administration and has since sounded the alarm bells on how the U.S. is not doing enough to prevent another pandemic.
A third human case of bird flu was identified in the state of Michigan last week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Like other previous cases identified since March, the person is a dairy farm worker who had exposure to infected cows.
“We could be pool testing every dairy worker. I do believe that there are undetected cases in humans because we’re once again only tracking people with symptoms. When we did that with COVID, the virus spread throughout the Northeast undetected, because it took a long time to get to the vulnerable individuals,” she added.
A Des Moines University Cancer Therapy Breakthrough Used COVID Vaccines
Des Moines University (DMU) scientists may have discovered a treatment breakthrough for cervical cancer using COVID-19 vaccine spike proteins, according to findings published in a new study.
The findings open new avenues for treatment across other types of cancer, too, Yujiang Fang, an associate professor at DMU who spearheaded the research, said in an online statement.
State of play: The research builds on earlier work that demonstrated the protein’s ability to diminish certain cancer cells. How it works: COVID-19 vaccines use spike proteins to help people develop an immune response to the virus.
A team led by DMU showed they can also arrest the growth of cervical cancer cells and initiate their death, essentially acting like a “stop” signal, per the statement.
Clinical Trials to Begin for COVID Treatment Developed in South Carolina
State lawmakers approved millions of dollars for research on a new COVID-19 treatment that will soon begin clinical trials, with every step of the research and development to take place completely in South Carolina.
During the 2022-2023 legislative session, lawmakers made a $13 million investment, with future opportunities to invest up to more than $27 million in research on a nebulizer treatment for respiratory illnesses.
It’s a new way to treat COVID by inhaling medicine into the lungs to address respiratory inflammation, compared with the already-developed antiviral pill.
Research is taking place at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and clinical trials are set to start in the Upstate. Strange says if they prove successful, the lung treatment could soon come to critical patients across the state.
Long COVID’s Toll Outlined in New Report
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Long COVID continues to plague millions of Americans as the health costs of the pandemic linger four years later, a new report warns.
In a hefty document released Wednesday, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a nongovernmental group that advises federal agencies on science and medicine, detailed the damage that Long COVID has wrought.
“Long COVID can impact people across the life span, from children to older adults, as well as across sex, gender, racial, ethnic and other demographic groups,” it stated. And the damage it inflicts can be widespread and complicated.
“Long COVID is associated with a wide range of new or worsening health conditions and encompasses more than 200 symptoms involving nearly every organ system,” the report added.
Novavax, With a 369% Gain, Tears Ahead Again on a Key FDA Move
Investor’s Business Daily reported:
Novavax (NVAX) stock zipped to a nearly two-year high Thursday after the Food and Drug Administration set a potential approval date for its COVID vaccine in April.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Novavax said the FDA said it completed its filing review of the final portion of its request for approval. The agency is set to make its decision in April 2025.
On Wednesday, Novavax said it plans to launch an updated booster to target the JN.1 variant, in line with the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee’s recommendation. Pfizer (PFE) and Moderna (MRNA) are also planning to prepare JN.1-focused boosters.
The Novavax COVID vaccine has never been officially approved. Instead, the company has racked up sales under an emergency use authorization. Last September, the FDA approved updated boosters from Pfizer and Moderna, but didn’t authorize Novavax’s shot until October.
Australia Hit by ‘Big Wave’ of COVID at Same Time as Increase in Flu
Australia is experiencing a “big wave” of COVID-19 infections that is coinciding with a rise in influenza and other winter illnesses, health authorities and experts are warning.
Deakin University’s epidemiology chair, Prof Catherine Bennett, said there was a direct alignment in the rise of COVID-19 and flu across the nation, which were “both at that critical point of takeoff where you see a rapid escalation.”
The report also said younger age groups in the state were experiencing high rates of RSV and influenza, while pertussis and pneumonia were also “unseasonably high” in school-aged children.
The ACT government announced on Tuesday that due to a steady increase in COVID-19, influenza and RSV case notifications, Canberra Health Services would put in place additional safety measures, including a mask mandate and increasing COVID-19 testing for hospital patients.
Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points + More
Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points
On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci will return to the halls of Congress to testify before the House subcommittee investigating the COVID-19 pandemic. He will most likely be questioned about how the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he directed until retiring in 2022, supported risky virus work at a Chinese institute whose research may have caused the pandemic.
Although how the pandemic started has been hotly debated, a growing volume of evidence — gleaned from public records released under the Freedom of Information Act, digital sleuthing through online databases, scientific papers analyzing the virus and its spread, and leaks from within the U.S. government — suggests that the pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China. If so, it would be the most costly accident in the history of science.
Here’s what we now know: The SARS-like virus that caused the pandemic emerged in Wuhan, the city where the world’s foremost research lab for SARS-like viruses is located. At the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a team of scientists had been hunting for SARS-like viruses for over a decade, led by Shi Zhengli.
Their research showed that the viruses most similar to SARS‑CoV‑2, the virus that caused the pandemic, circulate in bats that live roughly 1,000 miles away from Wuhan. Scientists from Dr. Shi’s team traveled repeatedly to Yunnan province to collect these viruses and had expanded their search to Southeast Asia. Bats in other parts of China have not been found to carry viruses that are as closely related to SARS-CoV-2.
When the COVID-19 outbreak was detected, Dr. Shi initially wondered if the novel coronavirus had come from her laboratory, saying she had never expected such an outbreak to occur in Wuhan. The SARS‑CoV‑2 virus is exceptionally contagious and can jump from species to species like wildfire. Yet it left no known trace of infection at its source or anywhere along what would have been a thousand-mile journey before emerging in Wuhan.
Fauci Testifies Publicly Before House Panel on COVID Origins, Controversies
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert until leaving the government in 2022, faced heated questioning Monday from Republican lawmakers about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A Republican-led subcommittee has spent over a year probing the nation’s response to the pandemic and whether U.S.-funded research in China may have played any role in how it started. Democrats opened the hearing saying the investigation so far has found no evidence that Fauci did anything wrong while missing an important opportunity to prepare for the next scary outbreak.
This time around he faced a new set of questions about the credibility of his former agency, the National Institutes of Health. Last month, the House panel revealed emails from an NIH colleague about ways to evade public records laws, including by not discussing controversial issues on government email.
Republicans also have accused Fauci of lying to Congress when he denied in May 2022 that his agency funded “gain of function” research — the practicing of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential real-world impact — at a lab in Wuhan.
“It would be molecularly impossible” for the bat viruses studied with EcoHealth’s funds to be turned into the virus that caused the pandemic, Fauci reiterated in Monday’s opening statement.
WHO Member Countries Approve Steps to Bolster Health Regulations to Better Brace for Pandemics
The World Health Organization said member countries on Saturday approved new steps to improve global preparedness for and response to pandemics like COVID-19 and mpox, and set a new deadline for agreeing on a broader treaty.
Countries agreed by consensus to amend the International Health Regulations, which were last changed in 2005, such as by defining the term “pandemic emergency” and helping developing countries to gain better access to financing and medical products, WHO said.
The move came as the U.N. agency ended its six-day World Health Assembly this year, after plans to adopt a more sweeping pandemic “treaty” at the meeting was shelved largely over disagreements between developing countries and richer ones about better sharing of technology and the pathogens that trigger outbreaks.
But countries agreed to complete negotiations on the pandemic accord with the year, “at the latest,” WHO said.
Scientists Race to Perfect New Oral COVID Treatment Poised to Replace Paxlovid
Researchers at Rutgers believe they are among the lead in developing an oral COVID-19 treatment that could supplement or replace Paxlovid, an antiviral drug that aids in preventing hospitalizations among high-risk patients.
Their report, published in the journal Science, shows that an alternative medication, a viral papain-like protease inhibitor, inhibits disease progression in animals, a necessary step before human drug trials.
The Rutgers team hoped to make a drug that interfered with viral papain-like protease (PLpro), a protein that performs important functions in all known strains of COVID-19. Creating such a drug required detailed information about PLpro’s structure, which Wang’s team got from the Arnold Lab at Rutgers’ Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine (CABM).
Laboratory testing established that the most effective of those drug candidates, a compound dubbed Jun12682, inhibited several strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including strains that resist treatment with Paxlovid.
‘Egregious and False Claims’: MOH Rejects People’s Power Party’s Call to Suspend COVID Vaccination
The Ministry of Health has rejected calls by the People’s Power Party (PPP) to temporarily suspend Singapore’s COVID-19 vaccination program.
The political party, founded by Goh Meng Seng, issued a statement on May 29 calling for MOH and the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) to halt the administering of vaccines in lieu of the “increasing” number of reports regarding the adverse effects associated with the vaccine.
It cited “studies and analyses by prominent medical experts”, which claimed that COVID-19 vaccines caused high incidences of severe side effects. The party also claimed that Singapore had been experiencing “unusual and exceptionally high excess deaths of at least 20% when the COVID-19 vaccine was introduced.”
In a statement on Monday (June 3), the Health Ministry dismissed the PPP’s claims as “egregious and false.”
U.S. FDA Advisers to Consider if New COVID Shots Should Target JN.1 Variant
Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will vote whether to recommend that COVID-19 vaccines for 2024-25 should target the JN.1 variant, the most dominant this year, documents filed on Monday showed.
Shares of Novavax (NVAX.O) soared 11% in morning trade, after the documents were released. The company had said last month it would only be able to offer a COVID vaccine in the United States this autumn if regulators accept the shot it started manufacturing to target the JN.1 variant.
The FDA’s staff in separate documents said vaccine makers developing the new booster shots may need to consider targeting one of the JN.1 subvariants such as KP.2, as further evolution of the virus could take it away from the older strain. The documents were posted ahead of the advisers’ meeting on Wednesday. The meeting was postponed from May 16 as the FDA sought more time to “obtain surveillance data and other information” on the circulating virus.
COVID Will Still Be Here This Summer. Will Anyone Care?
By now, it’s as familiar as sunscreen hitting the shelves: Americans are headed into another summer with new coronavirus variants and a likely uptick in cases.
This is shaping up to be the first COVID wave with barely any federal pressure to limit transmission and little data to even declare a surge. People are no longer advised to isolate for five days after testing positive. Free tests are hard to come by. Soon, uninsured people will no longer be able to get coronavirus vaccines free.
Inflation Pressures Lingering From Pandemic Are Keeping Fed Rate Cuts on Pause
Hopes for interest rate cuts this year by the Federal Reserve are steadily fading, with a stream of recent remarks by Fed officials underscoring their intention to keep borrowing costs high as long as needed to curb persistently elevated inflation.
A key reason for the delay in rate cuts is that the inflation pressures that are bedeviling the economy are being driven largely by lingering forces from the pandemic — for items ranging from apartment rents to auto insurance to hospital prices. Though Fed officials say they expect inflation in those areas to eventually cool, they’ve signaled that they’re prepared to wait as long as it takes.
Yet the policymakers’ willingness to keep their key rate at a two-decade peak — thereby keeping costs painfully high for mortgages, auto loans and other forms of consumer borrowing — carries its own risks.
NIH Official Set to Testify Before COVID Panel on ‘Discrepancies’ in Pandemic Timeline + More
NIH Official Set to Testify Before COVID Panel on ‘Discrepancies’ in Pandemic Timeline
Lawrence Tabak, principal deputy director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will testify before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic later this month, with committee Chair Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) planning to ask about the “discrepancies” between prior testimonies. Tabak has agreed to testify before the subcommittee on May 16. He previously served as acting NIH director from December 2021 to November 2023. In January, he sat for a closed-door interview with the select subcommittee.
In a letter first shared with The Hill, Wenstrup cited to Tabak the recent testimony from EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak and the apparent “conflicts” between what he said and what NIH officials, including Tabak, have said as reason for the requested testimony.
Among the discrepancies the subcommittee found in Daszak’s testimony was his claim that EcoHealth was late in submitting its Year 5 report to NIH because it was “locked out” of the agency’s system, a claim that NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research Michael Lauer has refuted.
Wenstrup also asked for clarification on what NIH knew regarding the location of samples from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and whether the agency knew what the status of the relationship was between EcoHealth and the WIV. The virology lab in Wuhan was formally debarred from the U.S. for 10 years in September, though Daszak acknowledged EcoHealth is still in contact with the lab. Following Daszak’s testimony, Wenstrup called for EcoHealth to similarly be barred from receiving federal funds.
Wenstrup questioned if NIH is certain that no federal funds have reached WIV and whether EcoHealth’s continued contact is a violation of the debarment.
Pandemic Treaty Talks Will Go on After Missed Deadline, Some Progress, WHO Says
Talks to draw up a global pact to help fight future pandemics have ended without a draft agreement by the expected deadline, but progress has been made, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
Negotiators from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 194 member states were hoping to have a final draft agreement by the end of Friday, with a view toward adopting the legally binding text at the World Health Assembly later this month. But they missed that deadline and will now continue negotiations over the coming weeks ahead of the assembly, the World Health Organization (WHO), which is hosting the member-state-led negotiations, said in a statement on Friday evening.
Some of the treaty’s most contentious elements, including details around a “pathogen access and benefits system”, have already been pushed back for later discussion, with a deadline in two years. The system intends to codify sharing of material with pandemic potential, such as new viruses or strains, and ensure all countries benefit fairly from vaccines, drugs and tests developed as a result.
An existing agreement that governs pandemic influenza also has a clause about selling vaccines at affordable prices or donating them to WHO. It allows for between 5% and 20% for both options, to allow for flexibility in negotiating with manufacturers.
This framework is what would be brought into play should the H5N1 strain of avian flu, which has raised alarm after being identified in cows in the United States as well as among other animals and birds, become easily transmissible between humans.
Status of Chinese Citizen Journalist Who Reported on COVID Unknown on Day of Expected Prison Release
The whereabouts of a Chinese citizen journalist who served four years in prison for reporting on the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan and was expected to be released Monday are unknown, raising concern from activists. Zhang Zhan, who had been sentenced to four years in prison on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a vaguely defined charge often used in political cases, has finished serving her sentence at Shanghai’s Women Prison.
Ren Quanniu, a former lawyer who previously represented Zhang, said he could not reach her father and expressed concern that Zhang would be released only to be put under another form of control by police. Monday was the last day of her four-year sentence, confirmed Ren and Jane Wang, another overseas activist who launched the Free Zhang Zhan campaign in the U.K.
Zhang was among a handful of citizen journalists who traveled to the central Chinese city of Wuhan after the government put it under total lockdown in February 2020, in the early days of the pandemic. She walked around the city to document public life as fears grew about the then-mysterious coronavirus. During her prison stay, Zhang staged a hunger strike and was hospitalized at one point in 2021.
Zhang’s family has faced police pressure during her stay in prison, and her parents have declined interview requests from media. Her family at times could only speak to their daughter by phone at the prison.
Japan’s Shionogi Says COVID Treatment Did Not Meet Endpoint in Late-Stage Trial
Japan’s Shionogi & Co (4507.T) said on Monday its pill-based treatment for COVID-19 did not meet the primary endpoint of showing a statistically significant reduction of 15 common symptoms of the illness in a global, late-stage trial. The company’s pivotal Phase 3 study (SCORPIO-HR) of ensitrelvir did however demonstrate a potent antiviral effect compared to placebo, the company said.
Shionogi said previously it expected the pill, known commercially as Xocova, to deliver $2 billion in annual sales if it secured U.S. approval. Xocova would compete with Pfizer‘s antiviral drug Paxlovid. Shionogi’s CEO told the Nikkei newspaper in March that the company expected to be able to sell the drug in the U.S. in early 2025.
Xocova was granted emergency approval by Japanese regulators in November 2022, making it the nation’s first domestically produced oral treatment for COVID. It received full approval in Japan in March 2024.
The Japanese government bought 2 million courses of the drug, most of which remain unused and are set to be destroyed, according to a Kyodo report this month.
Will Your Last COVID Vaccine Work Against New ‘FLiRT’ Variants?
There are two new COVID-19 variants circulating, posing a threat to a summer surge. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been tracking the new variants, scientifically known as KP.2 and KP.1.1 since at least the start of 2024. They’ve been steadily growing in prominence ever since, and have garnered the nickname “FLiRT” because of their mutations.
The latest data shows KP.2 is the dominant strain in the U.S., comprising almost 25% of the tests that have been sequenced. KP.1.1 makes up about 8% as of the end of April. Both are sublineages of the JN.1 lineage of the Omicron variant, the main COVID variant for roughly three years.
Both FLiRT variants are considered very similar to JN.1, health officials say, with early data suggesting only a couple of changes in their spike proteins.
It’s too soon to say whether a new COVID vaccine will be created for the summer months. While the CDC recently eased guidance surrounding COVID, the agency still recommends everyone 6 months old and older get the updated COVID vaccine released in fall, if they haven’t already.
Data Suggest SARS-CoV-2 Could Jump From Raccoon Dogs to People, but Species Barrier May Interfere
Raccoon dogs may carry and transmit COVID-19–causing SARS-CoV-2 to humans, although critical differences in the enzyme that facilitates viral entry into the cell may make the jump unlikely, a study in PLOS Pathogens finds.
“The key to a coronavirus moving from one species to another is its spike protein’s ability to bind to receptors on the cells of the new host,” the authors noted.
University of Minnesota researchers probed the interaction between the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE 2), which lets the virus enter the cell. Coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV-2 are known for their ability to jump species, the researchers said.
“Structural comparisons highlighted differences in the virus-binding residues of raccoon dog ACE2 compared to human ACE2 …, explaining their varied effectiveness as receptors for SARS-CoV-2,” the researchers wrote. “These variations contribute to the species barrier that exists between raccoon dogs and humans regarding SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”