New COVID-19 variant discovered at Texas A&M, researchers studying its mutations and last updated 2021-04-19 19:41:00-04 COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS â Variants of the virus seem to make headlines pretty often during the pandemic.. So when new ones emerge in our own backyard, should we panic? Researchers say, It's not 'nothing', but it's not something you should lose sleepover. ".....what we are doing is flipping over rocks, and when you flip over enough rocks, you are going to find some weird bugs. This is definitely one of them. Finding it early is the best way to stop this and we think we did find this one quite early," Chief Virologist at the Global Health Research Complex at Texas A&M, Dr. Ben Neuman, said.