New research suggests that the strain of coronavirus that is taking hold in New York and other parts of the United States that aren’t on the west coast originated in Europe and not China, where the virus was first discovered late last year.
Research teams at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine analyzed the genetic history of coronaviruses taken from New Yorkers starting in mid-March and concluded that many were European in origin.
“The majority is clearly European,” Harm van Bakel, a researcher at Mount Sinai who authored a study awaiting peer review, told the New York Times.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge also published a recent study that said three distinct strains of the coronavirus have developed, with each strain affecting different parts of the world.
The “A” and “C” types were found in “significant proportions” in Europeans and Americans, while the “B” type was the most common type in East Asia, they found.
The A type is the “ancestral” type most closely resembling the strain found in bats, which many cite as the likely origin point for the virus now wreaking havoc around the world.
It later mutated into the other types which have affected different parts of the globe, their report said.
The virus was first discovered in Wuhan, China last year and killed thousands of people in Asia before it spread across the globe. It’s been traced to an open “wet market” where live animals were sold.
President Trump on January 31 announced the U.S. would impose new restrictions on travel from China into the United States.
On March 11, Mr. Trump announced he was suspending travel from Europe for 30 days, with some exceptions, as the virus continued to spread.
There are more than 1.6 million cases worldwide and more than 97,000 people have died from the virus, according to a tracker from Johns Hopkins University. It’s estimated that more than 365,200 people have recovered.
In the U.S., there are more than 467,000 cases and 16,700 coronavirus-related deaths, with more than 26,500 recoveries.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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