Scientists in California believe there is a native strain of coronavirus in the state that could be responsible for the dramatic increase in the number of cases, a report said on Sunday.
Two separate research groups discovered the apparent California species while searching for the new variety believed to be native to the United Kingdom, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The supposed California species is in the same “family tree” as the British species and could be behind the state spread in recent months, the paper said.
One of the labs that discovered the strain, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said it accounted for 24 percent of the roughly 4,500 viral samples collected across California in the last weeks of 2020.
Another analysis found that 25 percent of 332 samples taken in Northern California were from the new strain.
“There was a homegrown variety under our noses,” Dr. Charles Chiu, a laboratory medicine specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, told the paper.
Chiu said they only found the species when looking for the British variety.
Dr. Eric Vail, a pathologist at Cedars Sinai, said the species could be responsible for doubling the state’s total death toll in less than three months.
“It probably helped speed up the number of cases around the holiday season,” Vail said.
“But human behavior is the most important factor in the spread of a virus, and the fact that it happened when the weather turned colder and in the middle of the holidays when people gather is no coincidence.”