A user guide for coronavirus variants in California

It seemed like everything was getting better – and then came the mutants.

Yes, the horror story that we’ve been in the coronavirus pandemic for a year has already challenged us with many just-as-uu-turns. And here we are, with the number of cases and deaths declining, businesses reopening and millions of people being vaccinated in every corner of the country. Things look up. But now health officials and infectious disease experts are watching something that threatens all this progress: the COVID-19 mutations.

You have probably heard of these varieties by now: the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazilian varieties. There even appears a California and New York version.

What are they? Will the vaccines protect us against it? And how big is the threat to our recovery?

These are the key questions because scientists and medical providers are trying to stop their spread and end the pandemic.

Like other viruses, the coronavirus has mutated over time. Its crown-like points may change as it spreads. This is not uncommon at all, and it is not always worrying. Tracking mutations helps scientists detect the spread of the virus from place to place. But several variants raise concerns in the US

In general, “they spread faster, are highly transmissible, can cause more diseases, and can evade the immune response,” said Melanie Ott, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology in San Francisco.

This is not necessarily true for every variant, and scientists do not agree whether some of the new strains, such as the one first detected in South Africa, make people sicker than the original.

“We do not know yet,” said Benjamin Pinsky, medical director of the Clinical Virology Laboratory at Stanford.

Even the naming of the variants themselves is controversial and incredibly complicated. Different researchers use different names for the same virus. Some use the date on which a variant was first identified, while others deal with what specific part of the virus has changed. All of this has led to people identifying geographical variants. This in turn has raised concerns about the fact that residents of those places are being improperly stigmatized, but so far there is no clear, standardized alternative.

Here is a quick summary of the varieties of concern in the US:

The British tribe

This variant, also known in the scientific community as B.1.1.7, was identified in the United Kingdom last autumn. It appears to be about 50% more contagious than the original virus, scientists say. In January, UK experts said it also looked more deadly than the original strain. It was first detected in the US in December 2020 and is now being widely distributed. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 2,600 cases have been reported in at least 47 states and Puerto Rico. California has recorded more than 200 cases. The CDC said it could become the dominant variant in the US by spring.

The good news: Researchers like Pinsky are less concerned about the British variant than some others because vaccines appear to be very effective in keeping people exposed to this variant ill.

The South African tribe

This variant, also called B.1.351, was identified in South Africa in October and moved to the USA by January. It seems to be better to evade antibodies produced by the body’s immune system, raising concerns about whether this variant reduces the effectiveness of available coronavirus vaccines. For example, clinical trials overseas on Novavax and AstraZeneca PLC vaccines have shown that they are less effective in South Africa than elsewhere.

The US has recorded more than 68 cases of the South African variant in 17 states, including several cases in California. According to the CDC, there is no evidence to suggest that the variant has an impact on the severity of diseases, but the South African health minister said it appears to affect young people more than earlier versions of the coronavirus. (This observation also coincided with a large number of grade parties where young people gathered.)

The Brazilian tribe

This variant, known as P.1, was identified in January when Brazilian travelers arrived in Japan. As with the South African variant, scientists are concerned that the Brazilian strain may deceive better antibodies, which means that vaccines may be less effective.

There is also evidence that people who have already recovered from COVID-19 can be re-infected by the Brazilian strain. This seems to be happening in the Brazilian city of Manaus, which was hit so badly last spring with another variant that some scientists speculated that the city would have achieved herd immunity, where a large percentage of the population became immune and the virus begins to struggle to spread. But then P.1 struck earlier this year, infecting people who were already ill.

So far, at least 13 cases have been reported in at least seven U.S. states. Stanford scientists have found another Brazilian variant, known as P.2, in the Bay Area, and Barbara Ferrer, director of public health in Los Angeles County, said Wednesday officials have also identified a case there. It is different from the P.1 variant which is of great concern, but according to the CDC it has not yet been identified in California.

California and New York

There is also another source of concern in California, which appears to be a homemade variant known as B.1.427 and B.1.429. This variant is now widespread in California, and research from UCSF suggests that it may make people sicker and that it may be more contagious than the previous coronavirus.

Gavin Newsom’s government said on Wednesday that a variant that is spreading in New York and the East Coast – B.1.526, which is apparently also capable of evading some of the body’s defenses – has been identified in Southern California.

Most COVID-19 tests only determine if someone is infected or not, so it can be difficult to say exactly which patients have which variant. But Pinsky said it would be more helpful to do lab tests to find out what variants are spreading in a community, because then doctors can adjust the treatment plans. For example, people infected with certain variants respond well to monoclonal antibody treatments. But for other variants, such as the California variant, a combination antibody treatment may make more sense.

In recent weeks, researchers like Charles Chiu, an infectious disease expert at UCSF, have been watching the California variant in the Bay Area, focusing on the Mission District in San Francisco, where COVID-19 hit a largely Latinx community hard. As with other variants, experts monitor how they respond to the so-called neutralizing antibodies – see if the virus is resistant – and study transmissibility by looking at how quickly the virus spreads within individual households and beyond.

The understanding of health experts changes daily, sometimes even hourly. But they know that although vaccines may be slightly less effective against certain variants, all three approved in the US – Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson – have been shown to be 100% effective in preventing coronavirus-related deaths and hospitalizations. variant.

In other words, “even if you get infected and vaccinated, you do not die and you do not go to the hospital,” Ott said.

As for medicine, it’s a little miracle.

And the drug companies that manufacture the vaccines are already studying ways to make the shots more effective at repelling the variants, possibly through shot recordings.