Scientists have warned that a homemade coronavirus strain that emerged in California is more contagious and has higher antibody resistance than COVID-19 vaccines.
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, said the new variant has dangerous implications and should be considered a “concern” for the couple from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil, the Los Angeles Times reported. .
“The devil is already here,” said Dr. Charles Chiu, who led the study. “I wish it were different. But science is science. ”
According to the team’s unpublished findings, it suggests that the variant is transmissible between 19 and 24 percent more, according to the output.
Over a period of just five months, the new strain grew to account for more than 50 percent of all coronavirus samples used for genetic sequencing in the state, Chiu said.
It was also determined that the strain was more resistant to neutralizing antibodies, which raises serious questions about the amount of vaccines that can be protected against it.
Compared to previous strains, the effectiveness of neutralizing antibodies against the variant was reduced by half from the usual levels, according to the LA Times study.
Chiu said the variant will likely account for 90 percent of state cases by the end of the month.
Similar to strains in the UK and South Africa, the variant has a mutation in its spike protein, the part of the virus that makes it infectious, the newspaper reported.
The scientists recreated the mutation in a laboratory and found that it was able to infect human lung tissue 40% more easily, the media reported.