A new variant of the corona virus – AY.4.2 – caught the attention of scientists in July when it spread to the UK in July. Often this variant is known as ‘Delta Plus’. Now the concern is growing as the variant has also been detected in New York and California. Health officials have confirmed this. As of Friday, New York had five confirmed cases of AY.4.2. At the same time, two cases have been detected in San Diego and San Francisco counties of California. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has described the Delta variant as ‘concerning’. Delta causes fatal infections and spreads faster than other forms of the virus, according to the CDC. Some data suggests that it can cause more serious infections in unvaccinated people, although this is not yet confirmed.
Variants on the rise in the UKAY.4.2 is a variant of delta itself but the CDC does not consider it to be as ‘lethal’ as delta. AY.4.2 accounted for 10 per cent of the cases reported in the UK till Monday. Jeffrey Barrett, director of the COVID-19 Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, wrote on Twitter last week that it is ‘continuously growing in the UK.’ He said that this variant is different from other variants of the Delta.
The new variant is not necessarily a cause for concernHowever, it is replacing the Delta at a much slower pace in the UK, while the Delta replaced the already existing Alpha variant. Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Insider that a new variant is not a cause for “necessary concern.” “New variants keep coming up. The virus will continue to mutate. Although variants can grab headlines and people may be intimidated by them. The reality of the pandemic is not going to change.