A home-grown coronavirus strain that emerged in California is more contagious and shows greater resistance to antibodies from the COVID-19 vaccines, the scientists warned.
Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco said the new variant has dangerous implications and should be considered “worrying” on an equal footing with the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“The devil is already here,” said Dr. Charles Chiu, who led the study, to the channel. “I wish it were different. But science is science. “
In the team’s unpublished findings, this suggests that the variant is about 19% to 24% more transmissible, the agency said.
In a period of just five months, the new strain grew to represent more than 50 percent of all samples of coronavirus being used for genetic sequencing in the state, said Chiu.
The strain was also determined to be more resistant to neutralizing antibodies – which raises serious questions about how much vaccines will be able to protect against it.
Compared to previous strains, the effectiveness of neutralizing antibodies against the variant has been reduced to half its usual levels, the study found, according to the LA Times.
Chiu said the variant would probably account for 90% of the state’s cases by the end of the month.
Similar to strains in the UK and South Africa, the variant has a mutation in its spike protein – the part of the virus that makes it infectious, the newspaper reported.
Scientists recreated the mutation in a laboratory and found that it was able to infect human lung tissue about 40% more easily, the agency said.