California officials revealed more details on Monday about the new homegrown coronavirus strain that could be partly responsible for a surge in cases and deaths in the state.
Two research groups discovered the B1429 variant while looking for the highly contagious B117 variant that has been linked to the United Kingdom, officials said at a news conference.
The California mutation – reportedly in the same “family tree” as the British variant – has now been reported in 456 cases in the Golden State, Gavin Newsom said.
But the governor warned that the actual number of cases is likely to be much higher.
According to the LA Times, about a quarter of the viral samples collected in Los Angeles and Northern California by two different groups late last year contained the new strain.
Newsom said the state is still working to see if the B1429 strain leads to worse infections.
“We are still working, is that a COVID variant that is unique to California? Or is it something else? Again, we’re still working through that. We are working on its virulence, we are working on its portability to explore more understanding, ”said the Democratic Governor.
Health officials are still determining whether the new variant stock is more contagious than the regular kind, like its UK counterpart.
“We are concerned about it [B1429] attaches slightly more to the human cell than to the natural virus we have dealt with. That might make it more contagious, we’re not sure yet, we’re looking at it, ”said Mark Ghaly, California Health and Human Services Secretary.
According to the Johns Hopkins Medical Center, the number of cases has increased recently, with 35 percent of the 37,121 total deaths from coronavirus in California occurring in the past month.
Ghaly said a combination of vacation travel and the “curveball” of the new variant may be to blame.
“Look, I grew up and played sports all my life, [it] really depended on my opponent trying to understand, ”said Ghaly.
“We have an opponent that we have never seen before. We don’t have a game movie on COVID-19, we don’t know what it’s going to do, so we have to constantly watch the plays of the day to understand what’s going to happen tomorrow. “
Despite the warnings, Newsom on Monday lifted the state’s house arrest, imposed last month
Officials say it is unclear whether a new vaccine is needed to combat the B1429 strain, but they are urging Californians to continue to get vaccinated with current injections.