Genomics researchers at Stanford have confirmed California’s first two cases of the South African coronavirus mutation in Alameda and Santa Clara counties, Gov. Gavin Newsom said today.
The 501Y.V2 variant is one of several recent mutations of the virus, most of which involve changes to its spike protein — the part of the virus that enables it to enter human cells — that may make it more contagious and slightly more resistant to vaccines.
“The issue of mutations is top of mind, not only here in the state of California, across this nation, but increasingly around the globe,” Newsom said today (Feb. 10) during a briefing in Fresno County.
The state has also confirmed 159 cases of the COVID-19 variant that originated in the United Kingdom and 1,203 cases of the two variants that originated on the West Coast, according to Newsom.
Nationally, newly-reported Covid cases have dropped 56% over the past month, based on a seven-day average. The seven-day average of Covid tests returning positive fell to 6.93% over the past week, the lowest since Oct. 31. — Bay City News
OMG, if we’re not supposed to call COVID-19 “the China Virus” or the “Wuhan Virus” why on Earth are you calling this the African Mutant or the African Variant?
Well, COVID is a coronavirus variant discovered in 2019.There’s many families of coronaviruses . For example, the SARS virus from the early 2000s was one, as well as the MERS virus. It’s not ‘from China’ it’s a mainly zoonotic virus whose circulation ‘spilled over’ into human circulation. If you’re interested, I can post about the corresponding nomenclature of these variants.
Now that Trump’s gone, we can go back to using geographical terms to describe viruses. It wasn’t really a problem when he was president, but it was a way to reinforce the narrative that he was a racist. Now that he’s gone, nobody cares.