Virus variant a concern

Version is similar to types that may weaken vaccines’ effectiveness

Two studies reveal a new COVID -19 version in NYC is beginning to spread.

Since the peak of the holiday surge in January, New York City has seen a steep decline in the number of people testing positive for the coronavirus each day, as have the state and the nation.

But the drop has not been as dramatic as it has been nationally, and community transmission in the city remains high, with about 3,200 probable and confirmed new cases reported daily. As more contagious variants spread, the city’s positive test rate has only dropped slowly, to over 7.1 percent this week from 8 percent two weeks ago, according to city data.

“Everything seems so tenuous and fragile in many ways,” said Dr. Wafaa El-sadr, a public health researcher at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “While overall there is a decrease, it is moving incredibly slow, in some ways slower than the decrease that has been noted in the rest of the country.”

Two studies that were published online this week — but have yet to be peer-reviewed — said that a new variant in New York City, first detected in samples collected in November, was beginning to spread. This variant, called B.1.526, shared similar characteristics to variants found in South Africa and Brazil that have shown to weaken the effectiveness of vaccines.

At this point it is unclear what the new variant means in the long-term, since officials do not know yet the real-world impact.

“Right now, we need to just consider this a variant of interest — something that’s interesting, that we need to follow and track,” Dr. Jay Varma, a senior adviser to the mayor’s office, said at a Thursday news conference. “But it doesn’t change anything about our public health concern.”

The existence of variants may require people who have been fully vaccinated to receive a third shot by the end of the year. But most importantly, it underscores the need to get more people vaccinated as soon as possible.

As of Wednesday, officials were publicly tracking only the more contagious B.1.1.7 variant — first discovered in Britain — which they said made up about 6.2 percent of cases in the second week of February.