A new COVID variant has been detected in the state. Dr. Krista Queen, Director of Viral Genomics and Surveillance at LSU Health Shreveport said they discovered the B 1.630 variant in samples from the Baton Rouge area which has mutations they are observing.
“These mutations may make the virus, that strain of the virus, more likely to evade the immune response but it’s not all bad news, the good news is that it’s at a very low percentage,” said Queen.
At this point, the B 1.630 variant has not been found in large enough quantities to be given Greek letter moniker and Queen said it’s still too early to tell if the vaccines might need to be tweaked for this particular variant.
“Just because we don’t have great data yet for and luckily, we don’t have a number of cases with it. But I will say for any variant for COVID-19 the vaccine is always going to be our very best tool,” said Queen.
Queen said this is not the first time this variant has been sequenced, but it is a first for Louisiana. She said less than 100 cases of the B 1.630 variant have been detected in the United States so far.
“With what we’re sequencing being almost completely Delta, it is interesting that this variant was able to cause a few infections and that’s something that we have to watch closely,” said Queen.
Queen said they sequence samples of the virus regularly from across the state.
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