The California Department of Public Health is warning about a new COVID-19 variant that researchers say could be more easily transmitted from person to person.
Chief of infectious diseases at UC Davis Children's Hospital Dr. Dean Blumberg says all the same rules as before still apply to the new variant. In an unusual move, the California Department of Public Health held a press conference late Sunday evening to provide information about the new variant, known to researchers as "L452R." The strain is different than the mutation that was first reported in the United Kingdom last year, and it is estimated that the variant now makes up about a quarter of the cases of the virus being genetically sequenced by California laboratories.