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Two separate teams of researchers said this week that they have found a disturbing new variant of the coronavirus in New York City that carries mutations that help it bypass the body’s natural immune response.
Researchers have named variant B.1.526. It has appeared in affected people in various neighborhoods of New York City, they said, and is “widespread in the Northeast.” One of the mutations in this variant shows the same difference as the first variant in South Africa, known as B.1.351.
It seems to avoid, to some extent, the body’s response to vaccines as well. “We observed a steady increase in the detection rate from late December to mid-February, with an alarming increase to 12.7% in the last two weeks,” the team at Columbia University Medical Center wrote in a report.
There are a growing number of variants born in the US, which has had more cases of coronavirus, about 28 million and where the spread is still intense, writes CNN.
The mutation in this variant that worries researchers the most gives the virus the ability to overcome some of the body’s immune responses, as well as treatments with vaccine antibodies.
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