{"id":5737,"date":"2024-05-10T11:40:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-10T15:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/?p=5737"},"modified":"2024-05-10T13:01:57","modified_gmt":"2024-05-10T17:01:57","slug":"flirt-covid-19-subvariant-dominant-in-canada-what-to-know-about-the-strain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/flirt-covid-19-subvariant-dominant-in-canada-what-to-know-about-the-strain\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018FLiRT\u2019 COVID-19 subvariant dominant in Canada. What to know about the strain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Canada\u2019s lull in COVID-19 cases faces a potential disruption with the emergence of a new family of subvariants, playfully dubbed the \u2018FLiRT\u2019 variants.<\/p>\n<p>These genetic cousins, originating from JN.1, the Omicron subvariant that fuelled the winter surge, are now spreading nationwide, with one variant, KP.2, quickly gaining dominance in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>KP.2 is the dominant subvariant of the JN.1 strain, explained Gerald Evans, an infectious disease specialist at Queen\u2019s University in Kingston, Ont. As of April&nbsp;28, national data shows that KP.2 accounted for 26.6 per cent of all COVID-19 cases in Canada, surpassing other JN.1 subvariants.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><i class=\"fa fa-camera\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/i>&nbsp;Image description: Electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles. Photo by: NIAID. Image is licensed under a <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 DEED | Attribution 2.0 Generic license<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\" rel=\"license\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-width: 0;height: 31px;width: 88px\" src=\"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/09\/by.png\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<hr>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canada\u2019s lull in COVID-19 cases faces a potential disruption with the emergence of a new family of subvariants, playfully dubbed the \u2018FLiRT\u2019 variants.<\/p>\n<p>These genetic cousins, originating from JN.1, the Omicron subvariant that fuelled the winter surge, are now spreading nationwide, with one variant, KP.2, quickly gaining dominance in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>KP.2 is the dominant subvariant of the JN.1 strain, explained Gerald Evans, an infectious disease specialist at Queen\u2019s University in Kingston, Ont. As of April&nbsp;28, national data shows that KP.2 accounted for 26.6 per cent of all COVID-19 cases in Canada, surpassing other JN.1 subvariants.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/flirt-covid-19-subvariant-dominant-in-canada-what-to-know-about-the-strain\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">\u2018FLiRT\u2019 COVID-19 subvariant dominant in Canada. What to know about the strain<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[96,18,1093,651,1094,1115,14,1116,47],"class_list":["post-5737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-canada","tag-covid-19","tag-flirt","tag-jn-1","tag-kp-2","tag-kp-3","tag-sars-cov-2","tag-subvariants","tag-variants","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5737"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5740,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5737\/revisions\/5740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}