As is the case every year, new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 are circulating in Europe.<\/p>\n
In Germany, the variant XFG is now dominant. It is often referred to in the media as the “Frankenstein variant” and is reported to cause a so-called “razor blade throat” as well as typical COVID-19 symptoms.<\/p>\n
This variant bears the scientific name XFG, and is also called the “Stratus” variant. In Germany and other European countries, XFG has been increasingly dominant since mid-2025.<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) consider XFG a “variant under monitoring” (VUM), meaning health officials are watching it closely but do not yet consider it a cause for concern.<\/p>\n
Notably, COVID-19 infections have been at elevated levels across Europe, though cases are now falling in most countries, according to the latest ECDC data.<\/p>\n
Related<\/p>\n
So what are the special features of the “Frankenstein” variant?<\/p>\n
XFG is a recombination \u2013 a mixture of the two earlier virus sub-lines LF.7 and LP.8.1.2. Similar to Frankenstein’s monster, which was assembled from different body parts, XFG combines parts of different virus lines.<\/p>\n
It is normal for viruses to mutate and change over time.<\/p>\n
The term “Frankenstein” was first used to describe coronavirus subvariants after the Omicron variant took off in late 2021 in South Africa.<\/p>\n
The WHO and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) currently classify the risk from XFG as low.<\/p>\n
Incidentally, there is no clear evidence as to whether the “razor blade sensation” in the throat actually occurs more frequently with XFG.<\/p>\n
Symptoms such as severe sore throat and hoarseness are not specific to COVID-19 variants. They can also occur with other respiratory infections.<\/p>\n
It is almost impossible to reliably distinguish between COVID-19 and, for example, the flu based on symptoms alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As is the case every year, new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 are circulating in Europe.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[62327,18003,102,2960,99899,99898,56,54,55,75122],"class_list":["post-235935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ecdc","tag-frankenstein","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-omicron-variant","tag-razor-blade","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-xfg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}