Health officials first discovered a case of the Brazilian coronavirus variant in a New York resident last week. In a press release issued Saturday, officials said the patient is a Brooklyn resident in their 90s with no travel history, and that work has been done to find out more about the patient and any possible contacts.
The strain was first identified by scientists at Mount Sinai Hospital and then confirmed by the Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center Laboratories.
“It’s a race between the vaccine and the variants, and we continue to make tremendous progress in getting shots into the arms of suitable New Yorkers,” said Dr. Howard Zucker, the state’s health commissioner, said in a statement. “Meanwhile, we remind New Yorkers to do everything in their power to protect themselves and their neighbors as we continue to manage this pandemic.”
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The guidance reflects dr. Anthony Fauci’s, who also said that the best defense against emerging variants in the US is to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible. The P.1 variant is less common in the US than other mutations, such as the UKB1.1.7 variant, which experts say will become the dominant strain by the end of the month.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that at least 54 cases of the P.1. reported in 18 U.S. jurisdictions. Comparatively, there were 6,390 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant in 51 jurisdictions.
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Although the P.1 variant is more transmissible than the wild-type coronavirus, Oxford University said last week that new findings show that it is less threatening to the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and the one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. than previously thought.