Coronavirus 'New York Variant' Found In CT: Report

CONNECTICUT — In a marked turn for the worse, the daily coronavirus positivity rate statewide jumped to 4.49 percent, in the latest data released Tuesday by the Department of Public Health. The number of residents hospitalized with COVID-19 has also risen by 14 beds, to 403 patients.

Potentially more ominous was the news from the Yale School of Public Health that 44 cases of the coronavirus strain B.1.526, the so-called "New York variant," have been detected in Connecticut.

"One of our concerns about this particular variant is that it has the mutation that is also part of the South African variant... that we know in certain cases is causing people who have already had coronavirus to get reinfected with it," Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told CBS Face the Nation on Sunday. "The question is whether 1.526 is responsible for some of the increases we are seeing in New York right now."

Variant B.1.526 was first detected in New York in November 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers from Yale said the mutation found in the New York variant may make the "natural" immunity normally found in people who have already contracted the infection, less effective.

Virus variants occur when their genetic code mutates, which is not as rare or frightening as it seems. The mutations become "variants of concern" only when their new nature makes them deadlier or spread more easily. In early December 2020, the first COVID-19 variants came to the attention of epidemiologists in the United Kingdom ( B.1.1.7) and South Africa (B.1.351). Both were associated with increased incidence of COVID-19, and both have since made their way to Connecticut, along with two so-called "California variants" and one from Brazil.

The New York variant has been classified as a "variant of interest." Viruses in this category "are classified as such because they show resistance to treatments for COVID-19, but they have not shown evidence of increased transmissibility or disease, like the other variants," DPH spokesperson Maura Fitzgerald told Patch. "So, right now we are keeping an eye on the NY variants, but we are focused on the variants of concern."

As of Friday, most of the variant cases were located in New Haven County, according to DPH:

Gottlieb told CBS that he did not expect a "fourth wave" of COVID-19 such as Europe is currently experiencing. Instead, he expects the influx of virus variations and the push by many states to lift the restrictions placed on gatherings could result in the coronavirus plateauing: not resurging but not going completely away, either.