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#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘At Your Age, It’s the Vaccine or the Grave’A nurse in Baton Rouge has been on a crusade to overcome resistance among older African-Americans unwilling to take the coronavirus vaccine.Flossie West, 73, at the East Baton Rouge Council on Aging after receiving a shot of the coronavirus vaccine. “I’m just not interested because everyone tells me the virus is a hoax,” she had said earlier.Credit…Abdul Aziz for The New York TimesMarch 6, 2021, 1:52 p.m. ETBATON ROUGE, La — Flossie West was not at all interested in taking the coronavirus vaccine.Carla Brown, the nurse overseeing her care, was determined to change her mind.Ms. West, 73, has ovarian cancer, congestive heart failure and breathing difficulties — conditions that place her at grave risk should she contract the virus. As it is, Covid-19 has killed far too many of her neighbors in Mid-City, a low-rise, predominantly Black community that sprawls to the east of the Louisiana state capital.But Ms. West’s skepticism about the new vaccines overshadowed her fears of Covid-19. “I’m just not interested because everyone tells me the virus is a hoax,” Ms. West said. “And besides, that shot is going to make me more sick than I already am.”On Thursday morning, Ms. Brown, 62, breezed into Ms. West’s apartment and delivered a stern lecture: The virus is real, the vaccines are harmless and Ms. West should get out of bed, grab her oxygen tank and get into her car.“I’ll be darned if I’m going to let this coronavirus take you,” she said.In recent weeks, Ms. Brown has been frenetically working to persuade her patients to get inoculated, and her one-woman campaign provides a glimpse into the obstacles that have contributed to the troublingly low rates of vaccination in the Black community.Even as vaccine supplies become more plentiful, African-Americans are being inoculated at half the rate of whites, according to an analysis by The New York Times. The disparities are especially alarming given the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on communities of color, who have been dying at twice the rate of whites.Success! Flossie West received her first dose of the Moderna vaccine.Credit…Abdul Aziz for The New York TimesMs. Brown’s mission is fueled by personal loss. “My husband survived being shot in the head, and cancer twice, only to die from Covid-19,” she said. Credit…Abdul Aziz for The New York TimesThe racial gap in vaccination rates is no less stark in Louisiana, where African-Americans make up 32 percent of the population but just 23 percent of those who have been vaccinated.Part of the problem is access. In Baton Rouge, the majority of mass vaccination sites are in white areas of the city, creating logistical challenges for older and poorer residents in Black neighborhoods like Mid-City who often lack access to transportation. Older residents have also been thwarted by online appointment systems that can be daunting for those without computers, smartphones or speedy internet connections.But much of the racial disparity in vaccination rates, experts say, can be tied to a longstanding mistrust of medical institutions among African-Americans. Many Baton Rouge residents can readily cite the history of abuse: starting with the eugenics campaigns that forcibly sterilized Black women for nearly half of the 20th century, and the notorious government-run Tuskegee experiments in Alabama that withheld penicillin from hundreds of Black men with syphilis, some of whom later died of the disease.“The distrust among Black Americans comes from a real place and to pretend it doesn’t exist or to question whether it’s rational is a recipe for failure,” said Thomas A. LaVeist, an expert on health equity and dean of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University. Dr. LaVeist has been advising Louisiana officials on ways to increase vaccination rates.Seniors arrived at the East Baton Rouge Council on Aging to receive the vaccine.Credit…Abdul Aziz for The New York TimesRobbie Christian, a pharmacist, prepared to administer a dose of the Moderna vaccine at the Council on Aging. Credit…Abdul Aziz for The New York TimesMs. Brown, 62, the hospice nurse, has a good idea about how to change the minds of vaccine skeptics: encouraging one-on-one conversations with respected figures in the Black community who can address the misgivings and provide reliable information while acknowledging what she describes as the scars of inherited trauma. “If you look back at our history, we have been lied to and there has been a lot racial pain so it’s all about building trust,” she said.The Coronavirus Outbreak

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRestaurant Dining and Mask Use Linked to Virus SpreadIn U.S. counties without mask requirements last year, or in which restaurants reopened, infections and death rates rose.“You have decreases in cases and deaths when you wear masks, and you have increases in cases and deaths when you have in-person restaurant dining,” Dr. Rachel Walensky, the C.D.C. director, said Friday.Credit…Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated PressMarch 5, 2021, 5:32 p.m. ETEven as officials in Texas and Mississippi lifted statewide mask mandates, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday offered fresh evidence of the importance of face coverings, reporting that mask-wearing mandates were linked to fewer infections with the coronavirus and Covid-19 deaths in counties across the United States.Federal researchers also found that counties opening restaurants for on-premises dining — indoors or outdoors — saw a rise in daily infections about six weeks later, and an increase in Covid-19 death rates about two months later.The study does not prove cause and effect, but the findings square with other research showing that masks prevent infection and that indoor spaces foster the spread of the virus through aerosols, tiny respiratory particles that linger in the air.“You have decreases in cases and deaths when you wear masks, and you have increases in cases and deaths when you have in-person restaurant dining,” Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the C.D.C., said on Friday. “And so we would advocate for policies, certainly while we’re at this plateau of a high number of cases, that would listen to that public health science.”The findings come as city and state officials nationwide grapple with growing pressure to reopen schools and businesses amid falling rates of new cases and deaths. Officials have recently permitted limited indoor dining in New York City. On Thursday, Connecticut’s governor said the state would be ending capacity limits later this month on restaurants, gyms and offices. Masks are still required in both locales.“The study is not surprising,” said Joseph Allen, an associate professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the university’s Healthy Buildings program. “What’s surprising is that we see some states ignoring all of the evidence and opening up quickly, and removing mask mandates and opening full dining.”Other researchers said the new study confirmed the idea that viral transmission often takes place through the air, that physical distancing may not be sufficient to halt the spread in some settings, and that masks at least partly block airborne particles.President Biden’s health advisers have said in recent days that now is not the time to relax. As of Thursday, the seven-day average of new cases was still 62,924 a day, according to a database maintained by The New York Times.While that figure is down 14 percent from two weeks earlier, new cases remain near the peaks reported last summer. Though fatalities have started falling, in part because of the vaccination campaigns at nursing homes, it remains routine for 2,000 deaths to be reported in a single day.Mr. Biden on Wednesday criticized the decisions by the governors of Texas and Mississippi to lift statewide mask mandates and reopen businesses without restrictions, calling the plans “a big mistake” that reflected “Neanderthal thinking.”The president, who has asked Americans to wear masks during his first 100 days in office, said it was critical for public officials to follow the guidance of doctors and public health leaders as the coronavirus vaccination campaign gains momentum. As of Thursday, about 54 million people had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.“It may seem tempting, in the face of all of this progress, to try to rush back to normalcy as if the virus is in the rearview mirror,” Andy Slavitt, a White House adviser on the pandemic, said on Friday. “It’s not.”Diners in San Antonio on Wednesday. Credit…Eric Gay/Associated PressC.D.C. researchers examined the associations between mask mandates, indoor or outdoor restaurant dining, and coronavirus infections and deaths last year between March 1 and Dec. 31. The agency relied on county-level data from state government websites and measured daily percentage change in coronavirus cases and deaths.The Coronavirus Outbreak

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyL.G.B.T.Q. People Face Increased Risks From Covid, but Many Don’t Want the VaccineEvidence suggests that some sexual and gender minorities — especially people of color — are hesitant to get vaccinated due to mistrust of the medical establishment.Credit…Derek AbellaMarch 5, 2021Updated 3:53 p.m. ETAt her last doctor’s appointment, Erica Tyler, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., joked that she didn’t want to get vaccinated for Covid-19 “because another foot might grow out of my forehead. And I’m not ready for that.”Ms. Tyler, 68, a cancer survivor who has diabetes and high blood pressure, lost her wife to a heart attack nearly a year ago and has been staying home throughout the pandemic to avoid becoming infected with the coronavirus. But when the vaccine became available, she did not rejoice.“I was resistant,” Ms. Tyler said. She described feeling unsettled by the push to vaccinate minorities, especially given how Black people have been underserved or mistreated by the medical establishment in the past.“I felt that they were trying to storm people who they wanted to eliminate out of society,” she said, namely “the elderly and the Black people.”Research has shown that sexual and gender minorities, and especially people of color, are more vulnerable to becoming infected with the coronavirus and also more likely to have underlying conditions that could make them severely ill if they were to contract Covid-19. But many of the very people who are most at risk within these communities are also hesitant to take the vaccine, according to a recent study and interviews with health care workers as well as people of color who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer.“There’s an overarching mistrust around vaccination,” said Anthony Fortenberry, the chief nursing officer of the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, which provides medical care to L.G.B.T.Q. people in New York City. “They’re not sure if they want to get it.”Each of the three Covid vaccines currently available in the United States has been shown to be remarkably good at preventing serious illness and death. At Callen-Lorde, Mr. Fortenberry said he has counseled patients about the efficacy of the vaccine, eventually easing their fears.“They are not quick conversations,” he said. “They are addressing someone’s personal experiences and their history of discrimination.”But not everyone has a health care provider with whom they feel comfortable sharing their concerns.“I worry that without those conversations happening, people will continue to not get vaccinated,” he said.So far about 54 million people in the United States have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, and of those nearly 28 million have been fully vaccinated. At Callen-Lorde and other medical centers that treat many L.G.B.T.Q. patients, health care workers say they have seen a higher demand for the vaccine among white patients compared to patients of color.L.G.B.T. people of color were twice as likely as white non-L.G.B.T. people to test positive for Covid-19, according to a Williams Institute study published in February. Even though Black people are more at risk for contracting the disease, concerns about the vaccine are especially prevalent among this population, experts say. In a study published this month in the journal Vaccines, 1,350 men and transgender women who predominantly identified as gay or bisexual reported how likely they would be to get a Covid‐19 vaccine. The Black participants expressed significantly more vaccine hesitancy than their white peers, the study found.Health care workers are encountering the same resistance in their patients. “Some people just literally said, ‘Well, no — Trump was involved in getting this vaccine going so I’m not going to get the vaccine,’” said Jill Crank, a nurse practitioner at Johns Hopkins Community Physicians in Baltimore.Studies show that hesitancy about the Covid vaccine occurs across all demographic groups, including those in the medical profession. About three in 10 health care workers are hesitant about getting the vaccine, according to a survey published in December by K.F.F. (previously the Kaiser Family Foundation) compared to about a quarter of the general population.Dezjorn Gauthier, 29, a Black transgender man who lives about 20 minutes from Milwaukee, said that although he is currently eligible to get the vaccine, he doesn’t want it.“Right now it’s a no-go,” said Mr. Gauthier, a model and business owner who has Covid-19 antibodies because he contracted the coronavirus last year. The vaccine’s development moved “so rapidly and so quickly, it just has me a little bit hesitant,” he said, adding that he’s also unsure about the vaccine’s ingredients. “There’s a fear in the community.”The Coronavirus Outbreak

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyL.G.B.T.Q. People Face Increased Risks From Covid, but Many Don’t Want the VaccineEvidence suggests that some sexual and gender minorities — especially people of color — are hesitant to get vaccinated due to mistrust of the medical establishment.Credit…Derek AbellaMarch 5, 2021Updated 3:53 p.m. ETAt her last doctor’s appointment, Erica Tyler, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., joked that she didn’t want to get vaccinated for Covid-19 “because another foot might grow out of my forehead. And I’m not ready for that.”Ms. Tyler, 68, a cancer survivor who has diabetes and high blood pressure, lost her wife to a heart attack nearly a year ago and has been staying home throughout the pandemic to avoid becoming infected with the coronavirus. But when the vaccine became available, she did not rejoice.“I was resistant,” Ms. Tyler said. She described feeling unsettled by the push to vaccinate minorities, especially given how Black people have been underserved or mistreated by the medical establishment in the past.“I felt that they were trying to storm people who they wanted to eliminate out of society,” she said, namely “the elderly and the Black people.”Research has shown that sexual and gender minorities, and especially people of color, are more vulnerable to becoming infected with the coronavirus and also more likely to have underlying conditions that could make them severely ill if they were to contract Covid-19. But many of the very people who are most at risk within these communities are also hesitant to take the vaccine, according to a recent study and interviews with health care workers as well as people of color who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer.“There’s an overarching mistrust around vaccination,” said Anthony Fortenberry, the chief nursing officer of the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, which provides medical care to L.G.B.T.Q. people in New York City. “They’re not sure if they want to get it.”Each of the three Covid vaccines currently available in the United States has been shown to be remarkably good at preventing serious illness and death. At Callen-Lorde, Mr. Fortenberry said he has counseled patients about the efficacy of the vaccine, eventually easing their fears.“They are not quick conversations,” he said. “They are addressing someone’s personal experiences and their history of discrimination.”But not everyone has a health care provider with whom they feel comfortable sharing their concerns.“I worry that without those conversations happening, people will continue to not get vaccinated,” he said.So far about 54 million people in the United States have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, and of those nearly 28 million have been fully vaccinated. At Callen-Lorde and other medical centers that treat many L.G.B.T.Q. patients, health care workers say they have seen a higher demand for the vaccine among white patients compared to patients of color.L.G.B.T. people of color were twice as likely as white non-L.G.B.T. people to test positive for Covid-19, according to a Williams Institute study published in February. Even though Black people are more at risk for contracting the disease, concerns about the vaccine are especially prevalent among this population, experts say. In a study published this month in the journal Vaccines, 1,350 men and transgender women who predominantly identified as gay or bisexual reported how likely they would be to get a Covid‐19 vaccine. The Black participants expressed significantly more vaccine hesitancy than their white peers, the study found.Health care workers are encountering the same resistance in their patients. “Some people just literally said, ‘Well, no — Trump was involved in getting this vaccine going so I’m not going to get the vaccine,’” said Jill Crank, a nurse practitioner at Johns Hopkins Community Physicians in Baltimore.Studies show that hesitancy about the Covid vaccine occurs across all demographic groups, including those in the medical profession. About three in 10 health care workers are hesitant about getting the vaccine, according to a survey published in December by K.F.F. (previously the Kaiser Family Foundation) compared to about a quarter of the general population.Dezjorn Gauthier, 29, a Black transgender man who lives about 20 minutes from Milwaukee, said that although he is currently eligible to get the vaccine, he doesn’t want it.“Right now it’s a no-go,” said Mr. Gauthier, a model and business owner who has Covid-19 antibodies because he contracted the coronavirus last year. The vaccine’s development moved “so rapidly and so quickly, it just has me a little bit hesitant,” he said, adding that he’s also unsure about the vaccine’s ingredients. “There’s a fear in the community.”The Coronavirus Outbreak

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDavid Mintz, Whose Tofutti Made Bean Curd Cool, Dies at 89He set out to create an ice cream substitute for people who keep kosher. He created a phenomenon, also loved by vegans, diabetics and people with milk allergies.David Mintz, chairman and chief executive of Tofutti Brands, in 1984. His company went from distributing pint containers of its signature frozen vanilla soy-based dessert to developing some 35 plant-based products. Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMarch 5, 2021, 3:52 p.m. ETThe rise of David Mintz from Brooklyn caterer to the multimillionaire who became known as the “P.T. Barnum of tofu” began with a grandmother — not his own, but a 90-year-old woman who happened to walk into his prepared-food takeout grocery one day and apply for a job as a cook.Her homemade noodle kugel became such a neighborhood hit that from then on he hired only grandmothers as cooks — a babushka marketing brainchild that proved so successful, he opened a restaurant on the East Side of Manhattan, near Bloomingdale’s.His meal offerings, including prepared takeout dinners and catering, were strictly kosher; most of Mr. Mintz’s customers were observant Jews whose faith forbade mixing meat and milk. If they craved ice cream after dinner, for instance, they would have to buy a version made without milk.What another restaurateur might have lamented as his just deserts, Mr. Mintz accepted as a challenge to develop a pareve, or nondairy, crossover substitute.It took several years, and he gained 50 pounds. He began his research by buying a carton of soy milk in Chinatown, and he poured gallons of unappetizing gelatinous white concoctions down the drain of his kitchen in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn.“I am personally responsible for clogging the sewers of New York City,” he told Forbes magazine in 1984.Tofutti became known as the first commercial tofu ice cream. One writer said it made “a delicious and refreshing dessert that is the rival of many commercial brands of ice cream.”Credit…via TofuttiFinally, in about 1981, Mr. Mintz tasted victory by incorporating tofu into his recipe.Tofu, the curds of coagulated soy milk pressed into spongy white blocks, is fairly tasteless, so it can be transformed into savory flavors that appeal to people who keep kosher, or who are allergic to dairy or otherwise can’t tolerate it. It’s also commonly eaten by people who are diabetic or vegan, or who are dieting to reduce their cholesterol.His creation, which he called Tofutti, consisted of tofu emulsified with vegetable oil and mixed with alfalfa honey and other ingredients, which together took on a butter-fatty texture. Thanks to his flair for promotion and marketing, it became widely known as the first commercial tofu ice cream.“I like a pineapple-sweet potato Tofutti,” Mr. Mintz told The New York Times in 1984, “but the public may not be ready. I like the idea of mango, and I love hazelnuts, and watermelon is one of my favorites. I absolutely love garlic, but I don’t suppose. …”He died on Feb. 24 at a hospital in Englewood, N.J., near his home in Tenafly, said Rabbi Efraim Mintz, a nephew. He was 89.David Mintz was the chairman and chief executive of Tofutti Brands of Cranford, N.J., which expanded from distributing pint containers of its signature frozen vanilla soy-based dessert to developing some 35 plant-based products. Among them are pizza, ravioli and Mintz’s Blintzes, all made with milk-free cheeses.Promising early reviews, coupled with promotional materials that defined tofu, drove demand.“Mintz’s soyburgers evoke instant associations with potato pancakes,” Lorna J. Sass, a vegan cookbook author, wrote in The Times in 1981, “and his rugelach have the right cinnamon-raisin-nut balance to make their creation out of a flaky tofu-whole wheat crust seem downright remarkable.”“His vanilla Tofutti ‘ice cream,’” she added, “makes a delicious and refreshing dessert that is the rival of many commercial brands of ice cream.”Mr. Mintz distributed samples and drew orders from Zabar’s, Bloomingdale’s and other stores. Production zoomed from tiny batches in kettles to 10,000 gallons a week. The company went public, and Tofutti succeeded beyond even Mr. Mintz’s vivid imagination.Mr. Mintz in 2013. After production of Tofutti zoomed, the company went public and succeeded beyond even Mr. Mintz’s vivid imagination.Credit…Julio Cortez/Associated PressDonald Isaac Mintz was born on June 8, 1931, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn to Abraham Mintz, a baker, and Sadie (Horowitz) Mintz, a homemaker. (Legend has it that his mother, who spoke little English, reported his name as Dovid, Yiddish for David, but the nurse who filled out his birth certificate misunderstood — and thought he looked more like a Donald.)After graduating from a Lubavitcher Yeshiva high school in Crown Heights, he attended Brooklyn College, briefly sold mink stoles, and ran a bungalow colony in the Catskills, where he opened a deli.It was after he opened his Manhattan restaurant, he said in one of many versions of the story, that “a Jewish hippie” tipped him to the potential of tofu. “The Book of Tofu” (1979), by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, became his new bible.Mr. Mintz’s first marriage ended in divorce (“Bean curd wasn’t exciting to her,” he told The Baltimore Jewish Times in 1984). In 1984 he married Rachel Avalagon, who died this year. He is survived by their son, Ethan.Mr. Mintz often sought guidance from Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the venerable leader of the Lubavitcher Hasidic movement, to whom he had been introduced by his brother, Isaac Gershon Mintz. David Mintz would write daily $1,000 checks to Rabbi Schneerson’s philanthropies, according to COLLive, an Orthodox news site. (He was a founder of the congregation Chabad of Tenafly.)“Whenever I met with the rebbe I would mention what I was doing, and he would say to me: ‘You have to have faith. If you have faith in God, you can do wonders,’” Mr. Mintz said in an interview with Jewish Educational Media in 2013.Late in the 1970s he had to close Mintz’s Buffet, his restaurant on Third Avenue, because the block was being razed to build Trump Plaza. When he was offered the option to transplant his restaurant to the Upper West Side, he sought Rabbi Schneerson’s guidance. The rabbi’s secretary, Rabbi Leibel Groner, called him back, Mr. Mintz recalled, and said: “Get a pencil and paper and write it down. This is very important.”“I was very excited,” Mr. Mintz said. “This was the answer I was waiting for. Then he dictated to me, ‘The rebbe says, “Absolutely not.” The rebbe says you should continue with your experiments with the pareve ice cream and God will help you to be very successful.’”Mr. Mintz kept the formula for his success a secret between him and his production manager. “If you take all the ingredients and try to make Tofutti,” he told Money magazine in 1984, “you’ll never do it.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Oregon, Scientists Find a Virus Variant With a Worrying MutationIn a single sample, geneticists discovered a version of the coronavirus first identified in Britain with a mutation originally reported in South Africa.Coronavirus testing at the Virginia Garcia clinic in Hillsboro, Ore., last year. A variant found in Oregon may have evolved with a mutation that blunts the body’s immune response.Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesMarch 5, 2021, 12:38 p.m. ETScientists in Oregon have spotted a homegrown version of a fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus that first surfaced in Britain — but now combined with a mutation that may make the variant less susceptible to vaccines.The researchers have so far found just a single case of this formidable combination, but genetic analysis suggested that the variant had been acquired in the community and did not arise in the patient. “We didn’t import this from elsewhere in the world — it occurred spontaneously,” said Brian O’Roak, a geneticist at Oregon Health and Science University who led the work. He and his colleagues participate in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s effort to track variants, and they have deposited their results in databases shared by scientists.The variant originally identified in Britain, called B.1.1.7, has been spreading rapidly across the United States, and accounts for at least 2,500 cases in 46 states. This form of the virus is both more contagious, and more deadly, than the original version, and is expected to account for most infections in America in a few weeks.The new version that surfaced in Portland has the same backbone, but also a mutation — E484K, or “Eek” — seen in variants of the virus circulating in South Africa, Brazil and New York City.Lab studies and clinical trials in South Africa indicate that the Eek mutation renders the current vaccines less effective by blunting the body’s immune response. (The vaccines still work, but the findings are worrying enough that Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have begun testing new versions of their vaccines designed to defeat the variant found in South Africa.)The B.1.1.7 variant with Eek also has emerged in Britain, designated as a “variant of concern” by scientists. But the virus identified in Oregon seems to have evolved independently, Dr. O’Roak said.Dr. O’Roak and his colleagues found the variant among coronavirus samples collected by the Oregon State Public Health Lab from an outbreak in a health care setting. Of the 13 test results they analyzed, 10 turned out to be B.1.1.7 alone, and one the combination.Other experts said the discovery was not surprising, because the Eek mutation has arisen in forms of the virus all over the world. But the mutation’s occurrence in B.1.1.7 is worth watching, they said.In Britain, this version of the variant accounts for a small number of cases. But by the time the combination evolved there, B.1.1.7 had already spread through the country.The Coronavirus Outbreak