There is growing concern among public health professionals that extremely contagious variants of the coronavirus are the efforts to control the emergence of new COVID-19 cases that are hampering California.
Twenty-four new cases of a mutated SARS-CoV-2 strain, known as ‘B117’ and first identified in the UK in December, were discovered in San Diego County on Tuesday, bringing the total to the state at 32.
“We expect others to be identified,” Gavin Newsom told a news conference on Monday.
The variant of the virus – which is less detectable by current testing methods, but up to 80% more transmissible from person to person than previous mutations – could bring the current COVID-19 crisis in California to the breaking point and efforts to reopen the economy , threatened. a school.
“If the new variant succeeds in obtaining a mutation that hides it for PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests, we will be heading for the worst perfect storm,” said Fyodor Urnov, director of UC Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute . changes in the genetic material of viruses.
The new variant acquired mutations much faster than scientists expected. So far, 23 different variations have taken place, of which 17 have been linked to the building blocks of proteins that make up the virus.
Newsom said California plans to increase its contact detection and disease investigation efforts to track down the new strain, which has also been identified in New York, Georgia, Colorado and Florida.
“We have not yet located the new tribe in San Francisco,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, the city’s largest health adviser, said. “It will certainly not be surprising if and when it is detected.”
California has a partnership with UCSF to conduct aggressive genomics tests – about 5,000 to 10,000 tests a week to identify the various mutations of the virus circulating in the state.
Charles Chiu, director of viral diagnostics at UCSF, said the British strain was probably already circulating in the United States, but had so far been identified in the states with robust genomic succession testing programs.
“Current data suggest that this is a variant that is not currently found in the US,” Chiu said. ‘It’s in the minority of tribes circulating in the US. That said, it can change very quickly. In the UK, it accounted for 5% to 60% of cases in three weeks. That is why it is very important for us to be vigilant. ”
More contagious
The British variant, which presumably first appeared in September, is more contagious, but ‘not more serious in terms of its impact on your condition,’ Newsom said.
Public health officials believe that the mutations, including some changes to the important proteins, could bind the virus more strongly and penetrate human cells more easily.
“It’s a little tougher than the COVID virus we’ve seen,” said Dr. Mark Ghaly, the highest health official in California, said.
More cases could mean fewer people have access to urgent medical care, especially since hospitals in California are critically low on beds for intensive care.
“Beyond an existing pandemic, it could make things worse,” Chiu said.
Health officials in the UK have also suggested that the B117 variant contains mutations that make children just as susceptible to being infected as adults.
“No causality has been identified, but we can see it in the data,” said Neil Ferguson, a professor and epidemiologist at Infectious Diseases at Imperial College London. “We’ll have to gather more data to see how it performs going forward.”
Britain has closed its schools for the next six weeks as the country has a record number of COVID-19 hospitalizations.
Harder to locate
Because it is more difficult to detect the virus – due to a mutation in a portion of the spike protein gene that requires stricter tests to be identified – it may impair the ability of schools in the Bay Area to depend on rapid antigen tests to reliably examine asymptomatic students. and staff.
“The virus has more or less erased its fingerprints,” Urnov said.
A change in the genetic code of the virus, called “69-70del”, has helped to avoid detection by the immune system in some people, according to studies done in the UK.
Dr. Nicholas Moss, the health officer of Alameda County, said he was concerned about the new variant, but not too much.
“Variants have evolved over time, that’s part of the way these organisms work,” he said. ‘The data from England that I have seen suggests that this is spreading a little better. How much better is there another area for exploration. The circumstantial evidence is quite worrying, the direct evidence is still limited. ”
He said it was also unclear how widespread the variant is in the United States, although it has infected more people than the cases reported so far. And he said it was too early to say whether the British variant, or another mutation, had helped the current increase in the West Coast in cases.
“I have nothing to suggest that it will cause an increase in any part of the US,” he said. “Perhaps we will notice that something similar has been driving the West Coast here for the past few weeks, whether it is the British variant or another variant.”
Vaccine variants
Another variant known in South Africa, known as ‘501Y.V2’, which quickly became the dominant tribe in the country’s coastal areas, is also a cause for concern. Health experts are concerned that the vaccines currently being developed may not be effective against them.
“This is the most urgent question we are currently facing,” said Dr. Richard Lessells, an infectious disease expert working on the country’s genomic studies on the variant, told the Associated Press. “We are urgently doing experiments in the laboratory to test the variant.”
The strain has so far been identified in the United Kingdom, Finland, Switzerland, Japan and Australia.
“The way you fight something that tends to change is that you have more than one weapon,” Urnov said. “We have more than one test. We have more than one vaccine. As a wide range of vaccines are being developed, we hope for the time being that they will not be worldwide resistant. ‘
No variant was detected in the Bay Area, but Chiu said his laboratory is actively analyzing data from the region.
Meanwhile, he said the best way to limit the spread of the new strains is to continue with the old mitigation measures: masking, physical distance and good hand hygiene.
“If it’s here, there could be some more time to get it under control,” he said.
Chronicle reporter Erin Allday contributed to this article.
Aidin Vaziri is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected]