New COVID-19 variant spreading in New York, found in samples from November 2020, studies claim
FirstpostA new form of the coronavirus is spreading rapidly in New York City, and it carries a worrisome mutation that may weaken the effectiveness of vaccines, two teams of researchers have found. “But just knowing about it is good, because then we can perhaps do something about it.” Nussenzweig said he was more worried about the variant in New York than the one quickly spreading in California. “There was a pattern that was recurring, and a group of isolates concentrated in the New York region that I hadn’t seen,” said Anthony West, a computational biologist at Caltech. “Given the involvement of E484K or S477N, combined with the fact that the New York region has a lot of standing immunity from the spring wave, this is definitely one to watch,” said Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, who was not involved in the new research efforts.