According to a new study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, medical experts have identified a new strain of coronavirus which has become dominant worldwide and appears to be more infectious compared to the strains which spread during the early days of the outbreak in Wuhan.
The new version emerged in Europe in February, spread rapidly to the US East Coast and has been the dominant strain worldwide since mid-March, the scientists said.
Although experts have generally accepted that the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 on the West Coast possibly originated from China, the strain that is becoming prevalent in parts of the U.S. and elsewhere in the world appears to be the one that mutated and found its way into Italy - and scientists believe it is more dangerous than the original strain that broke out in Wuhan.
Like so much of the scientific community's findings over the last few weeks, the news comes from non-peer-reviewed results, and a report that has been immediately made public for urgent health purposes.
The 33-page document has been posted on the BioRxiv platform, and it stems from work headed by computational biologist Bette Korber, based in Southern California.
Most work on a vaccine worldwide has concentrated on earlier forms of coronavirus missing the latest mutation, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The researchers of the Los Alamos study claimed that they felt an "urgent need for an early warning" that the now-dominant coronavirus strain had transformed, prompting vaccine engineers to evaluate the variant to create appropriate therapies.
It is said that the mutation found in the Los Alamos study affects the spikes on the coronavirus' exterior which allows it to invade human respiratory cells.
The study was the result of over 6,000 coronavirus sequences from around the globe being analysed. According to reports, scientists used information from the Global Initiative for Sharing Influenza Data.
The Times states the research was recently conducted in an attempt to facilitate collaborations with researchers working on COVID-19 drugs and/or remedies.
Last week the Food and Drug Administration approved the emergency use of remdesivir, an anti-viral medication being developed for COVID-19 patients. Scientists believe a coronavirus vaccine is possibly one year or more away.
The coronavirus, known to scientists as SARS-CoV-2, has afflicted over 3.5 million people worldwide and has claimed the lives of over 250,000 since it was discovered last year.
The virus has forced many of the world's economies to shut businesses and schools, with several, including the U.S., implementing travel restrictions on the entry of foreign nationals.
