A NEW Covid-19 variant is "spreading rapidly" in New York City and could beat vaccines, researchers warn.
The new variant, called B.1.526, is spreading rapidly in the Big Apple and researchers fear it may carry a mutation that may weaken the effectiveness of vaccines.
The new variant first appeared in samples collected in November, and by February it accounted for about one in four viral sequences appearing in a database shared by scientists.
One study, which was posted on Tuesday, was published by a group at Caltech, the other by researchers at Columbia University, which is not public yet.
However, neither study has been published in a scientific journal, but the results suggest that the variant's spread is real, experts said.
Caltech reports that the B.1.546 variant was discovered by the Variant Database, a system that quickly examines the changing landscape of spike mutations.
“It’s not particularly happy news,” Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University, told the New York Times.
“But just knowing about it is good because then we can perhaps do something about it,” Nussenzweig, who was not involved in the new research, added.
More to follow…
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