A new “double mutant” variant of the coronavirus has been discovered in California – because scientists are worried that the strain could be more infectious.
The Stanford Clinical Virology Laboratory has identified and confirmed a case of the variant – which first appeared in India – in the Bay Area, Stanford Health Care spokeswoman Lisa Kim told the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday.
Seven other alleged cases are also being examined by Stanford.
The emerging strain is called a “double mutant” because it carries two mutations in the virus that help it cling to cells, the press reported.
The “double mutant” variant was found in 20 percent of cases sequenced in the state of Maharashtra, India, where coronavirus cases have recently risen by more than 50 percent in the past week, Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at noted the University of California, San Francisco.
It is not yet known whether this new variant of COVID-19 is more infectious or more resistant to the coronavirus vaccine, but Chin-Hong said it “makes sense” that it could be more transmissible.
“It also makes sense that it will be more transmissible from a biological perspective, because the two mutations act on the binding domain of the virus receptors, but there have been no official studies of transmission so far,” he told San Francisco. Chronicle.
One of the mutations in the variant is similar to that found on coronavirus variants first detected in Brazil and South Africa, and the other mutation is also found in a variant first detected in California, Chin-Hong added.
“This Indian variant contains two mutations of the same virus for the first time, previously seen on separate variants,” said the scientist.
“Since we know that the affected area is the part that the virus uses to enter the body and that the California version is already potentially more resistant to some vaccine antibodies, there seems to be a chance that the Indian version will do so. and that, “he explained.
Several other COVID-19 variants have already been detected in the US – including the highly contagious UK variant known as B.1.1.7, the South African variant B.1.351 and the Brazilian variant P. 1.
The UK variant represents 12,505 cases in the USA, while the variants in South Africa and Brazil represent 323 and 224 cases in the country, respectively, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.