Nurse Travis Langston prepares to administer a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy on Thursday, April 22, 2021. BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin recently said his company’s vaccine will likely stop the ‘double mutant’ coronavirus.
Spenser Heaps, Deseret News
India is in crisis right now due to the coronavirus pandemic. There are a number of reasons why COVID-19 is spiking there, including a “double mutant” version of the virus that has combined two mutations into one.
But BioNTech CEO Uhur Sahin said recently that the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine will likely work against that double mutant, which might calm fears that what is happening in India could happen in the United States.
LUCIRA COVID-19 Test Kit Identifies Viral Variants yahoo.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yahoo.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Photo: Pixabay
on April 8, 2021
Amid a recent increase in COVID-19 variant cases in Santa Clara County, researchers at the Stanford Clinical Virology Lab discovered another new variant in the county, called the “double mutant.” It was first reported in India and is now the first confirmed case in California.
Higher transmissibility and reduced immune response against the variant are concerning, but “it seems likely that our current vaccines, especially the mRNA products, will remain effective,” wrote infectious disease clinical professor Stanley Deresinski in an email to The Daily.
Every variant of concern has now been detected in Santa Clara County, including the B.1.1.7 strain originally discovered in the United Kingdom, B.1.351 in South Africa, P.1 in Brazil, B.1.525 and B.1.52 in New York and L452R, now known as B.1.427 and B.1.429, in California.
LUCIRA COVID-19 Test Kit Identifies Viral Variants apnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from apnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
. WASHINGTON Variants of the coronavirus are increasingly defining the next phase of the pandemic in the United States, taking hold in ever-greater numbers and eliciting pleas for a change in strategy against the outbreak, according to government officials and experts tracking developments. The highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant that originated in the United Kingdom now accounts for 27% of all cases in this country. It is the most common variant in the United States, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday a development that officials predicted months ago. Two other variants, which took root in South Africa and Brazil and also are more transmissible, are cropping up with increasing frequency in parts of the United States.