U.S. health care workers test people for CCP pneumonia in the testing lane during the outbreak.
Researchers in Ohio said Wednesday (Jan. 13) that they have identified two new variants of a Chinese Communist virus (Wuhan pneumonia) that may have originated in the U.S. One of the variants emerged in late December and early January and quickly spread to become the dominant strain in Columbus, the state, within three weeks.
The U.S. variant strains are as more infectious as the variants first detected in the United Kingdom, but do not appear to reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine, the researchers said. The researchers noted that one of the new strains, currently found in only one patient in Ohio, contains the same mutation as the most prevalent variant of the virus in the United Kingdom, and that this variant “is likely already present in the U.S. strain.
The Columbus strain, which has become the dominant CCP virus in the city, includes “three other genetic mutations not seen in SARS-CoV2,” the researchers said.
This new Columbus strain has the same genetic architecture as the earlier cases we studied, but the three mutations represent an important evolution that we know did not come from the British or South African branches of the virus,” said Dan Jones, vice chair of the Division of Molecular Pathology at Ohio State University and lead author of the study, in a statement. .”
The mutation “COH.20G/501Y” found in the Columbovirus strain may have occurred independently in multiple parts of the world in the past few months, the researchers said.
Researchers at Ohio State University, which has not yet published their full findings, said they will conduct a non-peer-reviewed study.
Jason McDonald, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a statement to CNBC that the agency is studying the new study.
Peter Mohler, chief scientific officer at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center and co-author of the upcoming study, said there is no data to suggest that the new strain of the virus will affect the effectiveness of the vaccine. He said, “Don’t overreact to this new variant until we have more data, and we need to understand the impact of the mutation on the spread of the virus, the prevalence of the strain in the population and whether it has a greater impact on human health.”
The White House Outbreak Task Force had warned states on Jan. 3 that a “U.S. variant” of the Chinese Communist virus may already exist. The report said, “The surge in cases this fall and winter is rising almost twice as fast as the spring and summer surges. This acceleration suggests that, in addition to the British variant already spreading in our communities, a U.S. variant may have evolved here and may be increasing in transmissibility by 50 percent.”
But the CDC refuted claims of the emergence of a U.S. variant on Jan. 8.
“Researchers have been monitoring U.S. strains since the outbreak began, including 5,700 samples collected in November and December,” a CDC spokesperson said. “To date, neither CDC researchers nor analysts have seen the emergence of a specific variant of the virus in the United States, unlike the emergence of B.1.1.7 in the United Kingdom and the emergence of the B.1.351 variant of the virus in South Africa.”
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