NEW YORK • About 735 cases of a coronavirus variant that emerged in New York City in November have now been identified in the United States, including 585 in the last two weeks, a federal health official said.
The mutation has travelled extensively through the metropolitan New York region, and individual cases have also been found in 14 other states, including Texas, Wyoming and Maryland, according to Dr Gregory Armstrong, director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Advanced Molecular Detection Programme.
The variant, known scientifically as B1526, likely started off in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, said Dr Anthony Fauci, a top medical adviser to President Joe Biden, in a Monday news briefing.
It is one of five concerning variants now being tracked nationally by health officials. The vast majority of cases involving the New York variant have been confirmed in the New York and New Jersey area, Dr Armstrong said in a Monday interview.
Though the variant could be more transmissible than the original wild-type Covid-19 strain, it is "relatively limited geographically right now", he added.
Recent research suggests B1526 needs to be closely watched "for its ability to evade both monoclonal antibody and, to a certain extent, the vaccine-induced antibody", said Dr Fauci, who also heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The variant may have arisen in November in immunocompromised people who remained sick despite treatment over a long period of time, according to recent research.
Dr 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."
Four other mutations worrying public health officials have also emerged - from the United Kingdom, known as B117; from South Africa, named B1351; from Brazil, named P1; and from California, known as the B1427/429 variant.
There have been about 1,563 B117 cases identified in the US, 23 of B1351 and just 10 of P1, Dr Armstrong said, citing global public database GISAID.
The CDC is worried about the New York variant, but not as much as the UK, South Africa and Brazil strains, according to Dr Armstrong. "It's not just the total number that have been sequenced, it's also the mutations that it has, and how widespread it is," he said.
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