SAN ANTONIO — Four years into the COVID pandemic, hundreds of people are still dying of the disease every day. The CDC says it's recording just under 600 deaths a day in the U.S. Now the CDC is sounding the alarm about a new set of COVID variants.
The new set of variants including KP.1 and KP.2 are nicknamed "FLiRT" and the CDC says both were detected in wastewater and are now the dominant variants in the U.S. But so many already have variant fatigue.
Dr. Jason Bowling, an infectious disease specialist with University Health and Professor of Infectious Diseases with UT Health San Antonio told us, "I can understand the fatigue. We've been dealing with this for quite a while. The good news is that hospitalizations right now are really low. Number of new cases is really low."
Even though experts say there hasn't been evidence there is more severe illness with these variants, they are still spreading rapidly.
"I think the reason they're bringing this forward is that it has now overcome this JN.1, the prior variant, and it was about 6% of the variants mid-April about a month ago, and now it's at 28%," said Dr. Bowling.
Some of the most common symptoms with the FLiRT variant include fever or chills, cough and sore throat, congestion and difficulty breathing, loss of taste or smell, and gastrointestinal symptoms.
Your best protection, is still a vaccine.
"But with waning immunity, as you pointed out, people not being up to date with the most recent vaccine, it's possible we could see a bump in cases in the summertime," said Dr. Bowling.
The CDC says only 22.6% of adults received the latest 2023 to 2024 COVID-19 vaccine which was released in September of last year.
Data also found vaccination percentages increased as age levels went up too. Those age 75 and up had the highest percentage of vaccination coverage out of all age groups.
Dr. Bowling added, "The current guidance is trying to make this more simple and more similar to the flu vaccine, where you get one dose in that full time frame before risk for viruses."
Dr. Bowling says the next updated booster should be available this fall.