California scientists believe there is a strain of self-produced coronavirus in the state that could be responsible for the dramatic increase in cases, according to a report Sunday.
Two separate research groups have discovered the apparent strain of California while searching for the new variant that is believed to come from the United Kingdom, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The alleged California strain is in the same “family tree” as the UK strain and could be behind the state’s spread in recent months, according to the newspaper.
One of the laboratories that discovered the strain, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said it accounted for 24 percent of the 4,500 viral samples collected across California in the last few weeks of 2020.
Another analysis found that 25 percent of the 332 samples taken in northern California were from the new strain.
“There was a homemade variant under our noses,” Dr. Charles Chiu, a laboratory medicine specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, told the newspaper.
Chiu said they only found the strain when they looked for the UK variant.
Dr. Eric Vail, a pathologist at Cedars Sinai, said the strain could be responsible for doubling the state’s total death toll in less than three months.
“It probably helped speed up the number of cases around the holiday season,” Vail said.
“But human behavior is the predominant factor in the spread of a virus and the fact that it happens when the weather gets cold and in the middle of the holidays when people gather is not an accident.”