Public health officials in Los Angeles reported on Wednesday that the country had detected the first cases of the coronavirus variants originally seen in Brazil and South Africa. Although only three cases of the virus strain from Brazil – also known as P.1 – and one case of the variant from South Africa – known as B.1.351 – have been detected, these are probably not the only cases in the country.
The director of public health, Barbara Ferrer, noted that “very few of our samples are genetically tested in this way.” Generally, only 5% of the tests are performed through genomic sequencing, according to the California Top Health Officer. The tariff is even less at the provincial level.
It is suspected that P.1 is less susceptible to monoclonal antibody therapeutic agents and restorative and post-vaccination sera, according to the CDC. These are treatments used to address infections.
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These issues also apply to B.1.351, which is also considered 50% more transferable by the CDC. See graph below.
CDC
Even more worrying, however, is that the majority of samples analyzed genomically in Los Angeles County last week appear to be. This list was led this week by the more contagious British variant – known as B.1.1.7 – which this week also became the dominant strain in the US.
While B.1.1.7 has been in CA for months, the increase in LA is surprising because the homemade so-called West Coast variant – B.1427 / B.1429 – has dominated the state for the past four weeks. by a very wide margin. The numbers in the table below show that the total cases of West Coast variants in the country have so far been identified at 415 and the number of British variants so far identified at 169. This is 42% of all tests that come back with B.1427 /B.1429 and 17% B.1.1.7.
The distribution at state level was even more pronounced. As of April 1, 851 cases of the British variant have been reported in CA. However, the same report shows that to date, almost 10,000 cases of the West Coast variants have been identified.
But last week in LA, B.1.1.7 detected up to 64% of the variants. B.1427 / B.1429 was only 20%.
The answer may lie in the CDC’s finding that, although the UK variant is 50% more transferable, the West Coast variant is only 20% more. The British variant could then surpass the less contagious West Coast tribe.
The discovery of the Brazilian and South African variants in Los Angeles comes just two days after the Stanford Clinical Virology Lab confirmed California’s first case of an emerging ‘double mutant’ variant originating in India. One of the mutations of India’s variant is like an important change first discovered in the Brazil and South Africa variants. The other mutation is also found in a variant that was first detected in the West Coast variant. It is unclear at this time whether the so-called double mutant is more contagious or resistant to vaccines.
Of course, just Tuesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state plans to drop most of its restrictions on Covid-19 on June 15, as long as the number of infections and vaccinations continues to move in the right direction. .
That could be a challenge because some major Covid-19 numbers got stuck in Los Angeles, Orange County, the Bay and Sacramento this week.
“Things are not going down anymore,” Ferrer said Wednesday. “We have a little flat.”