By variants, it should mention the unknown multitude of pre-covid era flu variants and including H1N1/avian as well.
Since when there's such a thing as "variants"? Maybe I'm mistaken but I've never heard about that terminology before covid19, nobody talked about "variants" for the seasonal flu or any other virus before
Before they were called "strains". The flu vaccines were made each year to suit "strains" which were supposed to be most common. The flu vaccine didn't work half of the time, because you could be exposed to a strain that wasn't expected that year.
The covid test can't differentiate between any flu.
I'm pretty sure they don't call it strains because that wouldn't fly technically speaking, so they came up with "variants" to patch the gap
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