Tuesday, May 18, 2021

The India COVID strain has been in New York City for over a month

 


Progress New York 

 The de Blasio administration updated online records about Coronavirus variants on Sunday, but the newly-released trend and cumulative data for various strains don’t add up.

 The Municipal Agency tasked with ensuring public health, NYC Health, released on Sunday a long-awaited update to Coronavirus variants sequencing that revealed, for the first time, the presence in New York City of the B.1.617 strain that appeared to originate in India and that has been ravaging that Asian nation. Not only did the update report, for data pulled from the GISAID database as of May 11, disclose the first cases of the B.1.617 variant in New York City, but the report also made retroactive disclosures, showing that the strain was first detected in COVID-19 cases from sequencing of specimens collected from April 5 – 11.

Notwithstanding the disclosures, the trend data and the cumulative data don’t add up. In the cumulative table, the B.1.617.2 strain showed 12 cases, whereas the trend table showed 16 cases for the most current week. Furthermore, the sample size was the second-lowest and less than half of recent peaks in March, according to the report’s figures. The press office supporting Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City) did not immediately answer a media request to offer explanations.

As reported by Progress New York, the de Blasio administration has for several days refused to account for the missing data.

For the week of April 26-May 2, the P.1 variant, first detected in Brasil in 2020, was observed in 5,9 per cent. of COVID-19 cases, as noted in a social media post. The rate of detection has been steadily increasing since early March. The upward trend in that strain has been happening as New York City residents have increasingly received vaccinations against the Coronavirus.

Separately, the number of cases of the B.1.526 strain subclassified as S:E484K+ plunged from 229 in the May 4 report to 34 in the May 11 report for the week of April 19-25 without explanation. The change was first observed on social media.

As reported by Progress New York, it not known why Mayor de Blasio hasn’t faced a Federal inquiry over apparent violations of open records laws, even when they may be detrimental to public health. The press office supporting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss, whose office would have jurisdiction, have again refused to answer questions submitted in advance for this report.

 Can't have a recovery for all of us without jukin' the stats...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

India still has Bubonic Plague. I'm surprised they noticed this.

Erik Baard said...

The longer-term presence of the strain while hospitalizations and deaths decline buttresses evidence for the efficacy of the vaccines against all known strains at this time. That's good news. The original strain will of course become a less and less common infection because the variants are more contagious.

Anonymous said...

The India strain is another name for the adverse side effects of the VAXX

Anonymous said...

Isn't it culturally insensitive to call it "The India COVID strain", "The UK strain", etc? Notice how the media has now mostly stopped calling it "The Spanish Flu" and uses "1918 Flu Pandemic".

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