A “growing” summer wave of Covid -19 has hit the UK as experts suggest the European football tournament is fueling a rise in infections. Epidemiology expert Professor Mark Woolhouse said the UK will see fluctuations in Covid levels – and that this pattern will continue over the coming decades. The latest figures from the UK Health Security Agency show that as of 19 June infections were up by 33 per cent on the previous week.
Hospital admissions saw a slight increase. Mass testing for Covid-19 ended in 2023, meaning routine surveillance will not show the extent of infections in the community. According to the UKHSA, Covid hospital admissions increased by 24 per cent in the week leading up to Sunday 23 June, with a rate of 3.
31 per 100,000 people compared with 2.67 per 100,000 in the previous week. The reports of a summer wave come as a new group of Covid mutations of “variants” has emerged, collectively referred to as FLiRT.
UKHSA said the term FLiRT was inspired by the names of the mutations in the genetic code of the variants, which descend from JN.1, with variant BA.2.
86 as a parent. According to the public health authority, three strings of the FLiRT variant – KP.1.
1, KP.2 and KP.3 – were responsible for 40 per cent of all Covid cases in the UK in April.
Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology, University of Edinburgh, said: “The surveillance of Covid cases in the UK is far less intensive than it once was, so it is difficult to track th.
