A new “double mutant” variant of the coronavirus has been discovered in California – as scientists are concerned the species may be more contagious.
The Stanford Clinical Virology Lab identified and confirmed one case of the variant – which first showed up in India – in the Bay Area, Stanford Health Care spokesperson Lisa Kim told the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday.
Seven other suspected cases are also being screened 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 outlet reported.
The “double mutant” variant has been found in 20 percent of cases sequenced in India’s hard-hit state of Maharashtra, where coronavirus cases have risen more than 50 percent in the past week, says Dr. Peter Chin-Hong. , an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco, noted.
It is not yet known whether 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 will be more transmissible from a biological perspective, as the two mutations act in the receptor binding domain of the virus, but there have been no official transmission studies so far,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle.
One of the variant mutations is similar to that 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 adds.
“This Indian variant contains two mutations in the same virus for the first time, previously seen in separate variants,” said the scientist.
“Because we know that the affected domain is the part that the virus uses to enter the body, and that the California variant is already potentially more resistant to certain vaccine antibodies, it seems to indicate that there is a possibility that the Indian variant may have this. can do 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 known as B.1.351, and the Brazilian variant known as P.1.
The UK variant accounts for 12,505 cases in the US, while the variants in South Africa and Brazil make up 323 and 224 cases in the country, respectively, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.