Researchers are investigating whether a homemade variant of the coronavirus that appears to be spreading faster than any other strain in California could be behind the recent outbreak of infections on the state holiday.
The Los Angeles Times reports that two independent research groups found the new strain, dubbed B.1.426, while looking for signs that a more transmissible strain first identified in the UK was spreading across the Golden State.
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A single instance of the strain was found in July, but was not discovered again until three months later. Although the strain was barely detected in October, it started to become more prevalent in the following months.
According to the media, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles found that the strain represented 24 percent of the approximately 4,500 viral samples collected across California in the last weeks of December.
In a separate study, the researchers found that 25 percent of the 332 samples taken from late November to December were from strain B.1.426.
“There was a local variant under our noses,” Charles Chiu, a laboratory medicine specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, told the Los Angeles Times.
Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said the strain has five mutations, including the L342R mutation, which alters the virus’s spike protein, which it uses to infiltrate human cells.
The death toll in California doubled in less than three months during the holiday season. The state has confirmed more than 3.1 million COVID-19 cases and 36,790 deaths.
Although researchers suspect that the new strain has influenced the recent increase in cases, hospitalizations and deaths in California, it is unclear to what extent it has aggravated the outbreak, as other factors such as colder weather, holidays, travel and disregard for health measures certainly played a role.
“It probably helped to speed up the number of cases during the holiday season,” Eric Vail, a pathologist at Cedars Sinai, told the channel.
“But human behavior is the predominant factor in the spread of a virus, and the fact that it happens when the weather has cooled and during the holidays, when people get together, is not an accident,” he said.
The researchers say they are continuing to investigate the transmissibility of the strain.
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