California’s COVID-19 Strain Could Be More Infectious
A new strain of the pandemic coronavirus first identified and now spreading in California, appears to be somewhat more transmissible and heightens patients’ risk of admission to the intensive care unit (ICU) and death, according to a preprint reporting lab studies and epidemiological data.
The variant is also present in other states, but its prevalence among more than 2000 samples collected in California swelled from 0% to greater than 50% between September 2020 and late January, according to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “This variant is concerning because our data shows that it is more contagious, more likely to be associated with severe illness, and at least partially resistant to neutralizing antibodies,” says senior author Charles Chiu, an infectious diseases physician and sequencing expert at UCSF. The data suggest the new strain “should likely be designated a variant of concern warranting urgent follow-up investigation,” the authors write in their preprint, which has not been peer-reviewed and which they say is expected to be posted online soon.
