NEW YORK – A new COVID-19 variant detected in New York City is concerning researchers, but Mayor Bill de Blasio's health adviser has slammed reports about the variant as "pathogen porn" for fueling hysteria about it.
Groups of researchers CalTech and Columbia University identified the variant, called B.1.526, using virus samples, the New York Times reported.
The variant started appearing in city samples in November. By this month, CalTech found B.1.526 in 27% of city viral sequences in its database, according to the report. Researchers at Columbia, meanwhile, found 12% of patients with coronavirus sampled at their medical center had a mutation found in B.1.526.
Dr. David Ho, who led the study team at Columbia, told CNN that the variant was “home grown, presumably in New York.”
Ho, the director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia, told the Times that the majority of cases were seen in upper Manhattan but they were also found in lower Manhattan, as well as in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Westchester. “So it seems to be widespread. It’s not a single outbreak,” Ho said.
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The variant shares similarities with the South African variant. It’s not yet known if the variant is more contagious or deadly, but it has raised concerns that it could impact the effectiveness of vaccines.
The CalTech study was put online Tuesday, while the Columbia study was posted Thursday. However, “neither study has been vetted by peer review nor published in a scientific journal,” according to the Times.
That led City Hall to criticize reports about the variant on Thursday morning, with one official calling it “pathogen porn.”
“It’s great that Columbia and other academics are looking into COVID variants,” Mayor Bill de Blasio spokesman Bill Neidhardt tweeted. “But please, please for the love of all that is holy share the data with public health officials before you publicize pre-writes that still have track changes with the NY Times. That’s all.”
Dr. Jay Varma, de Blasio’s senior public health adviser, also took issue with the media reports.
“Plea to academics: please review high impact studies w/govt health depts before marketing it to media,” Varma tweeted. “We’re left to decipher science from journalist’s abstract while fielding calls from electeds, public, media how this changes policy. Pathogen porn isn’t helping public health.”
Varma further addressed the Times report at the mayor's daily briefing Thursday.
"When you read this news, you need to be a little skeptical of everything you read. Not all variants are of public health concern," said Varma. "Some variants are just that — they're variants. They're just a little bit different. Some variants are variants of interest. They have changes in their structure that might change the virus' property. And some variants are variants of what we call public health concern. They have these mutations and we have enough data to show that they change whether the virus is more infectious, whether it's more lethal, whether it can change immunity, something else."
Varma said that as of now, the information in the Columbia study is considered a "variant of interest."
"Something that's interesting that we need to follow and track, but it doesn't change anything about our public health concern," Varma said. "We need more data and studies to understand that."
"This is a challenging battle and public health is a team activity," Varma said.
Mayor Bill de Blasio also said he understands the worry that some people may be feeling.
"It's understandable people hear 'variant' it is a cause for concern. Of course, and there's something about it that's unknown and that gets people worried. I don't blame anyone who's feeling that way," de Blasio said.
But the mayor said more information is needed.
"Until there's evidence that tells us that a variant is not handled well by vaccine, for example, or a variant has different impacts, we shouldn't assume the worst, we should say we need the full truth, we need the facts because so far the experience with the variants has been even where there's been some proof of being more transmissible, for example, it has not changed the reality," de Blasio said. "It has not changed the impact of the disease, it has not changed our ability to fight the disease with the vaccine and all the other measures we take. I want to demystify a little bit, until there's hard facts it's stay the course, use the strategies that are working."
New York Times reporter Apoorva Mandavilli, who wrote the aforementioned Times story, responded to the criticism on Thursday, tweeting: "For everyone who was having tiny cows over one of the preprints not being out yet, it is online now, just about 12 hours after the story published."
Mandavilli was referring to the Columbia study, which hadn't been posted when the Times story was published Wednesday.
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