[News] Noticias-Scientists find a new variant of the coronavirus in New York that worries scientists

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(CNN) - Two different teams of researchers said this week that they found in New York City and elsewhere in the northeastern United States a new variant of the coronavirus that is concerning. It carries mutations that help it evade the body's natural immune response, as well as the effects of monoclonal antibody treatments.

Genomics researchers have named the variant B.1,526. It occurs in affected people in various neighborhoods in New York City, they said, and is "scattered in the Northeast."

One of the mutations in this variant is the same as the disturbing change found in the variant that was first seen in South Africa and is known as B.1,351. It also seems to evade, in a way, the body's response to vaccines. And it is becoming more common.

"We saw a steady increase in the detection rate from late December to mid-February, with an alarming rise to 12.7% in the past two weeks," writes a team from Columbia University Medical Center in a report that It has yet to be released, although it is scheduled to appear in pre-print this week.

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It is the latest in a growing number of viral variants to emerge in the United States, which has recorded more coronavirus cases (28 million) than any other country and where the spread is still intense.

It's "homegrown, presumably in New York," Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia, who led the study team, said by email.

Viruses mutate all the time. The more people are infected and the longer they are infected, the greater the chance that viruses will change. The body of a patient will be loaded with billions of copies of a virus and it is possible that it will change slightly or mutate. Most will leave as they arrived.

But sometimes a mutation or pattern of mutations takes hold and is passed on. If viruses with such patterns become more common, they are called variants. Again, it's not unusual for variants to emerge, but if they give the virus troubling properties, such as increased transmissibility or the ability to evade treatments and vaccines, that's when doctors start to worry.

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The mutation in this variant of greatest concern to researchers is called E484K, and it gives the virus the ability to overcome part of the body's immune response, as well as authorized monoclonal antibody treatments. This mutation is appearing independently in many different cases, but it also appears in one particular variant: the so-called B.1,526.

"It is this novel variant that is emerging, alarmingly, in our patient po[CENSORED]tion in recent weeks," the Columbia team wrote in a copy of their report provided to CNN.

'We found that the detection rate for this new variant is increasing in recent weeks. One concern is that it could be starting to outperform other strains, like the UK and South African variants, ”Ho told CNN.

"However, we don't have enough data to confirm this point now."