So 20C-US has been in the US since May, if all of that information is correct.
Quote:
The homegrown mutation is hitting mostly the Midwest, researchers said in a press release, revealing that they traced back the strain to Texas, where it apparently first appeared in May.
"We have identified a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that emerged in the United States early in the coronavirus disease pandemic and has become one of the most prevalent US variants," the release states.
The SIU researchers also didn't find a reason/likelihood that the present vaccines wouldn't work on this variant, and that it is most prominent in the upper midwest;
Quote:
Gagnon's research team, which also included Koushik Sinha, assistant professor of computer science in the School of Computing, first noticed the possibility of the variant while looking at their own SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing data from Illinois.
"The data kind of jumped off the page when we looked at it, so we then started looking at national data, and later worldwide genome sequence data," Gagnon said.
The analysis revealed the U.S. variant had not spread significantly beyond the country's borders and that it was most highly prevalent in the Upper Midwest.
Most news articles from the past 24 hours are pretty sensationalist about this but it sounds like not a big deal, to me.
