‘Be Skeptical:' Top NYC Health Officials Race to Quell Concerns After NYT Variant Report - NBC New York

A New York Times report on a possible new COVID variant spreading in New York City is making waves, but scientists and City Hall were quick to criticize what they said was the potentially premature release of unfinished research.

The Times reported Wednesday, in part citing unpublished research from Columbia University, that a new variant seemed to be popping up in the city with a mutation that could weaken the effectiveness of vaccines.

Neither city nor state health officials had previously spoken publicly about this new development, and it immediately raised concerns about the prospect of another surge of illness.

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.

"Not all variants are of public health concern.

Some variants are variants of interest -- they have changes in their structure that might change the virus' property," Varma, senior public health adviser to the mayor's office, said.

"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.".

But it doesn't change anything about our public health concern.

Dave Chokshi, the city health commissioner who himself battled COVID-19 earlier this month, said there is no evidence at this point to suggest the variant identified in the Columbia report has contributed to the trajectory of cases, which he emphasized continue to decrease from their latest holiday spike.

City officials were notified couple of weeks ago. The NY Times began with another preprint from Caltech that appeared days ago.".

New York City officials, while taking issue with the Times' report on any locally emergent variant, have repeatedly expressed concern about other more transmissible coronavirus strains that have grown more prevalent in the U.S.

"We definitely want all of our academic partners to be working closely with us, sharing their data, sharing their findings, because this is a challenging battle and public health is a team activity," he said.

The B.1.1.7 variant, which first emerged in the United Kingdom last year, has spread to nearly every state in America, 45 as of the CDC's latest report.

To date, New York state has confirmed at least 154 cases of that strain, which city officials say may be more lethal, according to preliminary U.K.

The CDC only updates its variant numbers three times weekly, so the latest federal data may not reflect the latest local data.

New York City and state have ramped up their testing and investigation of potentially new strains in recent weeks.

Data: City of New York, State of New Jersey • Nina Lin / NBC