Over 90 percent of novel coronavirus samples from Arizona in a recent genetic analysis have a mutation that researchers hypothesize makes the virus more infectious.

So far, researchers have analyzed more than 1,400 samples of the virus from patients with COVID-19 and have identified a mutated strain that they believe could help explain the recent explosion of cases in the state.

This genetic mutation affects the spikes on the outside of the virus that the virus uses to attach to and infect host cells.

Because of the mutation's crucial location, it could change the way the spikes operate to infect people, making the virus more transmissible, according to David Engelthaler, co-director of the Translational Genomics Research Institute’s Pathogen and Microbiome Division.