Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, January 14th – Researchers from Ohio State University released a report on Wednesday that they found two new coronavirus variants that may have originated in the United States, one of which was at the end of December last year and the beginning of January 3 this year.
Within a time, it quickly became the main COVID-19 variant in Columbus, Ohio.
The researchers said that like the new variants initially detected in the United Kingdom, these new variants found in the United States seem to enhance the infectivity of the novel coronavirus, but do not seem to reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine.
Researchers found evidence of evolution of the variants in Columbus, Ohio.
They report that the coronavirus variant virus may have originated in the United States because the variants contains three genetic mutations that have never appeared in the coronavirus before.
“The new strain has the same genetic basis as the early cases we studied, but these three mutations represent a huge evolution, and we know that this variant does not come from the UK or South Africa,” said Dan Jones, the research leader and associate director of molecular pathology at the Ohio State University.
Jones added that it is too early to determine how infectious the virus may be in Columbus.
But researchers believe that it may be more contagious just based on the rate of its transmission in the past few weeks.
Peter Moeller, chief scientific officer of Wexner Medical Center in Ohio and co-author of the latest study, pointed out that there is no data that the two new variants will affect the effectiveness of the vaccine.
“It’s important that we don’t overreact to this new variant until we get more data,” he said in a statement. We need to understand the effect of mutations on the spread of the virus, the prevalence of variants in the population, and whether it will have a more significant impact on human health.
Earlier this month, the White House coronavirus task force warned states that a new variant may be spreading in the United States. The New York Times reported that this hypothesis was put forward by Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the task force, and is based on the severity of the epidemic in the United States in recent months.
Dr. Bruce Vanderhove, chief medical officer of the Ohio Department of Health, said in a statement that the Department of Health was “not surprised” by the discovery of a new strain of the virus in the state.
As the virus spreads widely around the world, researchers warn that it has more opportunities to variant, potentially becoming more infectious, or reducing the effectiveness of existing treatments and vaccines.
