The Day

CDC watching COVID-19 variant first detected in New York City

- By JOSH WINGROVE and JORDAN FABIAN

A new COVID-19 variant detected in New York City that’s now traveled through various city neighborho­ods is being watched closely by U.S. health officials, Anthony Fauci said on Monday.

The variant, known scientific­ally as B.1.526, likely started off in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, Fauci, a top adviser to President Joe Biden on the pandemic, said during a news briefing. It is one of five concerning variants now being tracked nationally by health officials.

Recent research suggests B.1.526 needs to be closely watched “for its ability to evade both monoclonal antibody and, to a certain extent, the vaccine-induced antibody,” said Fauci, who also heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“It’s something we take very, very seriously,” Fauci said.

The variant may have arisen in November in immunocomp­romised people who remained sick despite treatment over a long period of time. Fauci said infectious disease specialist­s are often asked whether immunocomp­romised people should get vaccinated.

“The answer is absolutely, yes,” he said. “Absolutely, yes, because that’s not only important for them for their own health. But that could be the breeding ground of the variant and the emergence of a variance.”

Rochelle Walensky, the chief of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, again warned that COVID-19 cases appeared to have halted their decline, leveling off at what is still a high level. She said variants and the case load could combine to reignite the pandemic before vaccinatio­ns take hold.

“At this level of cases, with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained,” Walensky said. “These variants are a very real threat to our people and our progress.”

Last week, reports by researcher­s at the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University in New York and the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center identified the variant and said it was quickly gaining ground in the city.

Anthony West, a senior research specialist at CalTech, first raised the possibilit­y that some portion of vaccine-induced immune response against the coronaviru­s “might be less effective because of the mutations” in the New York variant.

But the studies haven’t yet been peer-reviewed. And Eric Topol at the Scripps Research institute in California, said that while the mutations noted in the variant probably have some impact, further significan­ce remains unproven.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States