A new “double mutant” variant of the coronavirus has been discovered in California – because scientists are worried about it, the strain may be more contagious.
The Stanford Clinical Virology Lab has identified and confirmed one case of the variant – which first originated in India – in the Bay, Stanford Health Care spokeswoman Lisa Kim told the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday.
Seven other suspected cases are also being investigated by Stanford.
The emerging strain is called the ‘double mutant’ because it carries two mutations in the virus that help it attach to cells, the news agency reports.
The ‘double mutant’ variant was found in 20 per cent of cases followed by the severely plagued state of Maharashtra in India, where cases of coronavirus have recently increased by more than 50 per cent in the past week. Peter Chin-Hong, an expert in infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco noted.
It is not yet known if this new COVID-19 variant is more contagious or resistant to the coronavirus vaccine, but Chin-Hong said it makes “sense” that it could be more transmissible.
“It also makes sense that it would be more transmissible from a biological perspective, as the two mutations act on the receptor-binding domain of the virus, but so far there have been no official transmission studies,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. .
One of the mutations of the variant is similar to one found on the coronavirus variants first detected in Brazil and South Africa, and the other mutation is also found in a variant first detected in California, added Chin-Hong.
“This Indian variant contains for the first time two mutations in the same virus, previously seen on different variants,” the scientist said.
‘Since we know that the domain affected is the part that the virus uses to enter the body, and that the California variant is already more resistant to some antibody antibodies, it seems likely that the Indian variant can do it. that too, ”he explained.
Several other COVID-19 variants have already been detected in the US – including the highly contagious British variant known as B.1.1.7, the South African variant named B.1.351, and the Brazilian variant known as P.1.
According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the British variant is 12,505 cases in the USA, while the South African and Brazilian variants make up 323 and 224 cases in the country respectively.