The article looks at reopenings from a number of angles but feels like another piece that is weirdly disassociated from the new turns of the pandemic that we're experiencing in nyc.
Researchers at Caltech and Columbia determined that the strains found in New York, like other COVID variants, feature mutations on the virus’s spike protein, allowing it to penetrate into host cells and cause infections more effectively. B.1.526 is effectively two variants, featuring a pair of common mutations known as E484K and S477N — the latter of which “may affect how tightly the virus binds to human cells,” per the Times. According to a study from Columbia published in January, monoclonal antibodies made by Eli Lilly and Regeneron to treat COVID-19 have no effect against the South African strain, which also contains the E484K mutation. Other studies have also shown that variants with the E484K mutation are less susceptible to vaccines than the strain of the virus on which they were developed. |
