California officials on Monday revealed more details about the new home-grown coronavirus strain, which may be partly responsible for a sharp increase in cases and deaths in the state.
Two research groups discovered the B1429 variant while looking for the highly contagious B117 variant that has been linked to the UK, officials said at a news conference.
The California mutation – said to be in the same “family tree” as the UK variant – has now been reported in 456 cases across the Golden State, said Governor Gavin Newsom.
But the governor warned that the actual number of cases is likely to be much higher.
About a quarter of the viral samples collected late last year in Los Angeles and northern California by two different groups contained the new strain, according to the LA Times.
Newsom said the state is still working to see if the B1429 strain leads to worse infections.
“We’re still working, is this a California-exclusive variant of COVID? Or is it something else? Again, we are still working on it. We are working with his virulence, we are working with his transferability to investigate more understanding, ”said the Democratic governor.
Health officials are still determining whether the new variant’s actions are more contagious than the regular strain, like its British counterpart.
“We are concerned that this [B1429] it attributes to the human cell a little more than the natural virus we are dealing with. It can make it more contagious, we’re not sure yet, we’re looking at it, ”said Mark Ghaly, California Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Cases have increased recently, while 35 percent of the 37,121 coronavirus deaths in California occurred last month, according to the Johns Hopkins Medical Center.
Ghaly said that a combination of holiday travel and the “curved ball” of the new variant could be to blame.
“Look, I grew up and played sports my whole life, [it] it really depended on trying to understand my opponent, ”said Ghaly.
“We have an opponent that we’ve never seen before. We don’t have a game movie on COVID-19, we don’t know what it is going to do, so we need to be constantly watching the plays of the day to understand what will happen tomorrow. “
Despite the warnings, Newsom on Monday suspended the order to stay in the state home, which had been imposed last month
Authorities say it is unclear whether a new vaccine is needed to combat the B1429 strain, but are asking Californians to continue to vaccinate with current vaccines.