Most COVID-19 (coronavirus) patients in Southern California during the early months of the pandemic appear to have been infected by a variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus introduced to the region from New York state via Europe, not directly from China, where the virus was first detected, according to a new study conducted at Cedars-Sinai.
Most COVID-19 (coronavirus) patients in Southern California during the early months of the pandemic appear to have been infected by a variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus introduced to the region from New York state via Europe, not directly from China, where the virus was first detected, according to a new study conducted at Cedars-Sinai.
The findings were based on a genetic analysis of the virus found in tissue samples taken from 192 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 at Cedars-Sinai.
Investigators said they believed their study was the first published genetic characterization of SARS-CoV-2 in the Los Angeles population using an advanced technique known as next-generation sequencing, which analyzes all the genes, or genome, of a virus or other organism. The study was published Oct. 7 in the journal JAMA Network Open.
"Based on these findings, we concluded SARS-CoV-2 was likely introduced into the Los Angeles community predominantly from New York state but also through multiple other independent transmission routes that included Washington state and China," said Eric Vail, MD, assistant professor and director of Molecular Pathology in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Cedars-Sinai. He was co-senior author of the study.
Read more at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
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