NEW YORK - A new COVID-19 variant has been detected in France. The variant has been named IHU.
It was found to have infected 12 people living in an area near Marseille, a port city in southern France.
Health officials found that there are 46 mutations in IHU. This is even higher than the mutations found in Omron.
The cases have been linked to travel to the African country of Cameroon.
The new strain has not yet been seen in other countries and the World Health Organization (WHO) has not labeled the new strain as the type under investigation. It hasn't added any stress to the list since adding Omicron in November 2021.
WHO considers types of concern that increase transmission capacity or increase virulence or reduce vaccine effectiveness.
Experts say new types keep emerging but that doesn't mean they'll be more dangerous than previous strains.
According to a paper posted on medRxiv, the strain has E484K and N501Y mutations that could make it more resistant to vaccines and make it more transmissible but it's not clear whether any of these things will happen with it. No.
New York has seen a rise in fuel cases by the Omicron variant. The glimmer of hope has been that many New Yorkers are coming down with a less severe form of the disease.
Across the US, new COVID-19 cases have more than tripled in the past two weeks to more than 400,000, the highest level on record, amid a rush by many Americans to get tested. The high infection rate and consequent labor shortage are placing a heavy burden on employers large and small. Thousands of airline flights have been canceled in recent days. Many companies have postponed plans to return to work.
According to the CDC, Omicron caused 95% of new coronavirus infections in the US last week. The number of new cases in the US crossed one million on Monday.