{"id":1180,"date":"2021-01-19T12:36:57","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T19:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/wordpress\/?p=1180"},"modified":"2025-08-01T10:23:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T17:23:13","slug":"ucsd-says-new-strain-of-coronavirus-found-in-japan-also-likely-present-in-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/?p=1180","title":{"rendered":"UCSD says new strain of coronavirus found in Japan also likely present in U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s unclear how the variant’s infectiousness compares with the original virus<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/h3>\n

A new variation of the coronavirus discovered in Japan is \u201cvery likely already in the U.S.\u201d as well, according to Davey Smith, director of infectious diseases at UC San Diego.<\/span><\/p>\n

Japanese health officials said Sunday<\/a> that the variant, known as B.1.1.248, appears to have been brought into their country by four travelers from Brazil.<\/span><\/p>\n

The virus can be spread between countries by air travelers, although health officials say commercial airlines have worked hard in recent months to reduce that risk.<\/span><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t immediately clear whether the new strain will make it more difficult to immunize people against COVID-19, which has killed more than 1,850 people in San Diego County.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe know very little about the pathogenesis of this variant or the B.1.1.7 variant (discovered in England), or their ability to respond to the current therapies, but they do seem to be more transmissable, but even that is based on circumstantial evidence,\u201d Smith told the Union-Tribune.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe B.1.1.7 variant looks to still be susceptible to immune responses elicited by the Moderna vaccine (and thus likely the Pfizer one too), but this B.1.1.248 variant has yet to be tested.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In late December, the variant found in England was discovered to also exist in San Diego and other parts of the U.S. The strain has complicated the fight against COVID-19 because it is highly infectious.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the short term, it might be hard to spot B.1.1.248 in greater San Diego.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe current qPCR tests may not pick up this variant,\u201d said Rob Knight, an infectious disease expert at UCSD. \u201cWe are rapidly scaling up sequencing efforts between Scripps Research and UCSD, which will allow us to see all genome variants.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s unclear how the variant’s infectiousness compares with the original virus A new variation of the coronavirus discovered in Japan is \u201cvery likely already in the U.S.\u201d as well, according<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1180"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1554,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions\/1554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlab.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}