Two strains of the coronavirus that were first detected in California have become “variants of concern” in the threat classification system used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States. The two variants – identified by scientists as B.1.427 and B.1.429 – appear to be 20 percent more transmissible than the original virus, and some COVID-19 treatments could be less effective against them. The good news, however, is that the CDC does not believe that the approved vaccines are significantly less effective against the two variants, and neither variant of the coronavirus is at the CDC’s highest threat level of “high consequence variant”. Three other variants – one first detected in the UK, another in South Africa and another in Japan and Brazil – are also on the CDC’s list of worrying variants. There are also three other “variants of interest”.
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