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California scientists believe there is a local strain of coronavirus in the state that could be responsible for the dramatic rise in cases, according to a report on Sunday.
Two separate research groups discovered the apparent California strain while researching the new variant that is believed to be from the UK, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The alleged California strain is in the same “family tree” as the UK strain and could be the source of the state’s spread in recent months, according to the newspaper.
One of the labs that discovered the strain, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said it accounted for 24% of about 4,500 viral samples collected from across California in the last weeks of 2020.
Another analysis found that 25% of the 332 samples taken in Northern California were of the new strain.
“There was a local variant under our noses,” Dr. Charles Chiu, a laboratory medicine specialist at the University of California, San Francisco told the newspaper.
Chiu said they only found the strain when researching the British variant.
Dr Eric Vail, a pathologist at Cedars Sinai, said the strain could be responsible for doubling the state’s total death toll in less than three months.
“It probably helped speed up the number of cases over the holiday season,” Vail said.
“But human behavior is the predominant factor in the spread of a virus, and the fact that it happened when the weather turned colder and in the middle of the holidays when people are gathering is no accident.”
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