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A San Bernardino County resident is the first in California to test positive for a coronavirus variant from Brazil, known as P.1.

Share Since that time, the lab’s throughput has increased considerably. Testing volume was as high as 4,000 samples daily at the peak of the most recent COVID-19 surge. With infection rates dropping, the lab is now conducting about 1,600 tests per day. A year ago, the clinical virology laboratory had about 20 staff members. Since the COVID-19 pandemic reached the United States, the lab has transformed itself into a 24/7, three-shift juggernaut, with some 60 staff members, including technicians and scientists. Test samples have come to the lab not only from Stanford-affiliated health centers...

The first two California cases of the South African SARS-CoV-2 variant were recently detected by surveillance efforts at Stanford’s Clinical Virology Lab.

Dr. Benjamin Pinsky is a clinician and professor of pathology and infectious diseases at Stanford, and the editor-in-chief of the international Journal of Clinical Virology. He directs Stanford Medicine’s Clinical Virology Laboratory, which in January launched an ambitious project to identify and track variants of the Covid-19 virus in order to provide crucial information to vaccine researchers and public health officials. Earlier this month, his lab detected the first two cases of the South African Covid-19 variant in California. Pinsky spoke with J. from his office in Palo Alto. Tell me a...

The Stanford Clinical Virology Lab identified two cases of the variant, one each in Santa Clara and Alameda counties. The Santa Clara County case involved a person who had returned from international travel in mid-January.