Researchers find worrying new coronavirus variant in New York City

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https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/25/health/variants-coronavirus-new-york-city/index.html

Researchers find worrying new coronavirus variant in New York City

By Maggie Fox, CNN

Updated 6:21 AM ET, Thu February 25, 2021

(CNN)Two separate teams of researchers said this week they have found a worrying new coronavirus variant in New York City and elsewhere in the Northeast that carries mutations that help it evade the body's natural immune response -- as well as the effects of monoclonal antibody treatments.

Genomics researchers have named the variant B.1.526. It appears in people affected in diverse neighborhoods of New York City, they said, and is "scattered in the Northeast."

One of the mutations in this variant is the same concerning change found in the variant first seen in South Africa and known as B.1.351. It appears to evade, somewhat, the body's response to vaccines, as well. And it's becoming more common.

"We observed a steady increase in the detection rate from late December to mid-February, with an alarming rise to 12.7% in the past two weeks," one team, at Columbia University Medical Center, write in a report that has yet to be published, although it is scheduled to appear in pre-print version this week.
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It's "home grown, presumably in New York," Dr. David Ho, Director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia, who led the study team, said by email.
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The mutation in this variant that most concerns researchers is called E484K and it gives the virus the ability to slip past some of the body's immune response, as well as the authorized monoclonal antibody treatments. This mutation is popping up independently in many different cases but appears in one particular variant, as well -- the one called B.1.526.
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But the E484K mutation is seen in at least 59 different lineages of coronavirus, they said -- which means it is evolving independently across the nation and across the world in a phenomenon known as convergent evolution. It may give the virus an advantage.
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