Just as California was on the verge of actually turning the Covid-19 angle, the Stanford Clinical Virology Lab confirmed a case of an emerging variant that originated in India, Deadline learned.
According to Lisa Kim, senior manager of media relations for Stanford Health Care, “the clinical virology laboratory at Stanford Health Care identified and confirmed the newly described ‘India’ variant last week. This variant has the L452R mutation found in the CA variant, as well as another important mutation, E484Q. The same position was mutated to a different amino acid (K) in the South Africa and Brazil (P.1 and P.2) variants. ”
In more spoken terms, this means that one of the mutations of India variety is an important change that was first discovered in the so-called Brazil and South Africa variants. The other mutation is also found in a variant first detected in California, which is by far the newest strain of the state.
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The news was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
The development is worrying because for the first time it combines worrying mutations of separate, so-called variants of concern.
“This Indian variant contains for the first time two mutations in the same virus, previously seen on separate variants,” Peter Chin-Hong, an expert in infectious diseases at UCSF, told the Chronicle on Monday. ‘Since we know that the domain affected is the part that the virus uses to enter the body, and that the California variant is increasingly resistant to some antibody antibodies, it seems likely that the Indian variant it can do. that too. “
Stanford’s Kim warns that ‘it is not yet known whether this variant is more contagious or resistant to vaccine to vaccine.’ Despite an increase in India in recent weeks, officials at the end of March were more concerned about the spread of the British variant than the double mutant, according to AP.
But the news of a new, unusual strain adds an extra dimension to the growing concern about variants in California, especially since one of the mutations also occurs on one of the most common strains in the state.
As of April 1, California has followed five variants of concern, including the United Kingdom (B.1.1.7), Brazil (P.1 and P.2), South Africa (B.1.351) and, of course, the home West Coast variants (B.1.427 and B.1.429). See graph below.
Kim said there was ‘one case’ of the double mutant ‘by’ [genomic] sequence at Stanford, 7 presumably by examining RT-PCR. These numbers may not seem like much, but look at this context: in California, only a small number of test samples are marked for genomic analysis.
California, for example, conducted more than 55 million Covid-19 tests. Of these, less than 50,000 were designated by physicians for genomic sequencing. This means that less than 0.01% of the samples were tested. Granted, those tested were marked by experts, but in a region of 40 million, which is also the most diverse state in the union, such surveillance does not provide a reliable insight into how far these variants have spread.