Top virologist warns of 'Covid roulette' as new variant causes 'electric head zaps' and other horror symptoms
People are reporting a slew of unpleasant symptoms as new Covid variants run riot
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A top virologist has warned people are playing a game of "roulette" with every successive wave of Covid.
The warning comes as new variants rum amok through Britain and people report a slew of unsettling symptoms.
A new group of COVID-19 variants known collectively as FLiRT are driving up hospital admissions across the UK.
These subvariants descend from JN.1 - the dominant strain at the start of the year.
Meanwhile, the LB.1 strain - similar to the FLiRT variants but with an additional mutation - is also spreading.
There are no signs that these latest strains result in a more serious illness than their predecessors.
However, Doctor Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert, argues against complacency.
One sufferer says they can 'barely think straight or remember names' after being infected with the new variant
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“The dogma is that every time you get Covid, it’s milder. But I think we need to keep our minds open to the possibility that some people have worse symptoms,” said Doctor Chin-Hong.
Each time you get Covid is “kind of like playing Covid roulette”, he told the Los Angeles Times.
Anecdotal reports suggest he's onto something. Users have taken to Reddit to reveal their symptoms, which range from mild to debilitating.
One user wrote: "My brain completely shat itself. Could barely think straight or remember names. Super dupes exhausted. Took about 1.5 weeks to come right."
A second person wrote: "I always get electric zaps in my head from it", while a third added: "Body aches, my hearing in my left ear was f*****d and my sinuses were a bit blocked up."
On the milder end of the spectrum, one netizen said: "I had it recently had runny nose for 3 days then was fine", while another wrote: "All good now, just my resting heart rate is still elevated but no more feeling funny."
Summer wave?
As cases rise, speculation has swirled around a summer wave.
However, this is unlikely, a spokesman for the UKHSA tells GB News, as we are starting from a "pretty low base" and there's a lot of "noise" in the data.
Thanks to natural and vaccine-induced immunity, we are in a very different place to the early days of the pandemic.
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KP.3 variant is driving up hospitalisations and has 'unusual' mutations to the spike proteinGetty Images/Microsoft AI image generator Asleep at the wheel
This is not to say that the latest variants are not a cause for concern.
The KP.3 FLiRT variant appears to have a growth advantage over JN.1 and this mutational upper hand explains the current rise in cases.A
According to Doctor Rhoads, Vice Chair of the Microbiology Committee, the secret to KP.3's success lies in the evolution of the shape of its spike protein (the route by which the virus gains entry to healthy cells).
Mutations to the spike protein are thought to balance the virus’ fitness (its ability to infect humans and replicate) with its immune escape properties (its ability to evade humans’ immune memory, such as antibodies formed due to vaccines or previous infection), he explains.
"KP.3 is winning compared to other variants at this time because it has found a sweet spot in the combination of fitness and immune escape at this moment in time," he told GB News.