Two strains of the coronavirus first discovered in California have become “variants of concern” in the threat ranking system used by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The two variants – identified by scientists as B.1.427 and B.1.429 – both appear to be 20 percent more transmissible than the original virus, and some COVID-19 treatments may be less effective against them. The good news, however, is that the CDC does not believe the approved vaccines are significantly less effective against the two variants, and that there are no coronavirus variants in the CDC’s highest threat level, which is “ high-impact variant. ” Three other variants – one first discovered in the United Kingdom, another in South Africa, and another in Japan and Brazil – are also on the CDC’s list of troubling variants. There are also three other ‘interesting variants’.
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