Scientists in California have identified a new strain of the coronavirus while looking for the new variant from the United Kingdom, one that accounts for about a quarter of the viral samples collected in the last few weeks of 2020, the Los Angeles Times reports.
“There was a homegrown variant under our noses,” said Dr. Charles Chiu, a laboratory medicine specialist at the University of California San Francisco who worked with the California Department of Public Health to analyze the samples from the state’s northern region. He noted that if they hadn’t been looking for the U.K. strain, “we could have missed this at every level.”
The California strain is known as B.1.426 and was detected with genetic sequencing in a single instance last July before it began to spread about three months later. Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles found multiple instances of the strain in samples collected from patients in late November through December.
“We said, ‘Wow! There’s something different, something we didn’t expect to find,’” said pathologist Dr. Eric Vail. “All of a sudden, your brain starts going a mile a minute.”
He added, “It probably helped to accelerate the number of cases around the holiday season. But human behavior is the predominant factor in the spread of a virus, and the fact that it happened when the weather became colder and in the midst of the holidays when people gather is not an accident.”
“It seemed to spread quite fast,” said Santa Clara County health officer Dr. Sara Cody. “We are trying to understand whether the features of that outbreak are because of this variant — does this variant of the virus behave in some different way — or does it have to do with other factors that were present at the hospital?”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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