| Detroit Free Press
Colorado confirms first known US case of new COVID-19 strain
Colorado has confirmed the first known U.S. case of a new coronavirus strain first identified in the UK.
USA TODAY
It’s like the guards of the coronavirus pandemic, watching over the horizon and searching for intruders.
These infectious disease guardians – scientists from the Michigan Bureau of Laboratories doing the complete genome sequence of COVID-19 test samples – faced the warning bells on Saturday.
They warned state health officials and the public that a new, more transmissible variant of SARS-CoV-2 had been detected in a sample from Washtenaw County.
Health officials, called B.1.1.7 or the English variant, because it was first identified in September, are concerned about what its arrival in Michigan could mean for case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths.
Although this virus strain is not more deadly and is not known to make people more seriously ill than other previously identified strains, B.1.1.7 spreads more easily.
“It seems to be about 50% more transferable, or can spread 50% faster,” said Dr. Adam Lauring, an associate professor of infectious diseases and microbiology at the University of Michigan, said. “One way to think about it is if one person usually infects two other people on average with coronavirus, with the B.1.1.7 variant, that one person can infect three other people on average. And so enlarged, it can lead to many faster growth of the virus.
‘What I always come back to is this: if it spreads faster, it means there will be more people who will become infected and it means there will be more people who get sick and are hospitalized. And that could mean more people would die.
“While it’s not really deadly on an individual level, it spreads faster. It’s going to cause more infections and more serious illnesses and more deaths, so I think that’s the gripping thing,” said Lauring, whose work is in full genome order at UM is responsible for about 2.5% of the total coronavirus surveillance in the country.
The B.1.1.7 variant was detected according to a COVID-19 test sample from a woman who lives in Washtenaw County and traveled to the United Kingdom, according to state health officials.
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Two new cases have been identified among the woman’s close contacts, but it is still not clear if they have the same tension. It takes a minimum of five days to fully sequence a COVID-19 test sample to identify the specific strain, said Heather Blankenship, the divisional director of bioinformatics and sequencing at state laboratories.
“Many times it’s going to take up to a week because of holidays and weekends and other tests that are going on for diagnostics,” Blankenship said.
The health officials of the state’s Washtenaw County woman and her close contacts are now in quarantine.
Some states rise, Michigan waits
To date, the British strain of the virus has been identified in at least 16 other states.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday that the trajectory of the spread of the variant indicates it could become the predominant strain circulating in the U.S. in March.
If that happens, the CDC warned that it could ‘threaten strained health care resources, require extensive and stricter implementation of public health strategies, and increase the percentage of population immunity needed for pandemic control.’
This is already happening in the UK.
England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are locked up as hospitalizations and deaths from the virus skyrocket. And cases of the B.1.1.7 variant have been detected in many other European countries, leading to curfew in France and the closure of schools in Germany.
“We are being asked what we should do about this variant,” state epidemiologist Sarah Lyon-Callo told a news conference with reporters in early January before it was detected in the state. ‘I think about it, since this virus has spurred a bit in terms of its ability to transmit between people.
“Therefore, we must sharpen our game in terms of wearing masks, keeping social distance and staying at least six feet apart, avoiding crowds that air indoor spaces and washing our hands regularly.”
And it puts new urgency on vaccinating as many people as possible as quickly as it can be done.
“Of course we want the vaccine to roll out as soon as possible to protect people,” Lauring said. “We know what we need to do to control the virus, we just need to do even better just to achieve the same level of control.
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“What concerns me,” he said, “is that we have not done a good job, and that the work has only become more difficult.”
Stricter restrictions were imposed in Michigan in November, which closed the dining room at restaurants and bars, personally canceled high school and college classes, and halted organized sports.
The measures reduced the rising rate of new infections and hospitalizations. The average of seven days of new daily business fell to 2350 on Saturday, the lowest point since the end of October. Since the pandemic began, 535,534 Michiganders have been infected and 13,804 have died, according to state data.
As rates and hospitalizations dropped and vaccines came on the market, high schools were allowed to start in their own classes again. Many university campuses will reopen to students this week. Domestic entertainment venues and some sports have been resumed.
But the emergence of this new, more transmissible virus system is putting everything in jeopardy again.
“We will have to be even more careful about some mitigation strategies,” says Dr. Arnold Monto, a professor of epidemiology and global public health at the UM, who serves as acting chair of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s vaccines and related biologics. Products Advisory Committee.
He said state health leaders would have to see to it that the B.1.1.7 variant gained a foothold here.
“I think what we are doing is responding by shutting down or opening up based on the observation of the transfer,” he said. ‘Look at Atlanta, where things start again. Texas pulls up again. But we are not. The proof is in the pudding. ‘
Mutations are common, the impact of new strains is uncertain
All viruses mutate. This is what they do.
Some mutations help them to spread more easily. Others may cause the virus to cause more serious illnesses. Still other mutations actually imply that a particular variant of a virus cannot replicate and it dies.
“Making variants appear is not unexpected,” Monto said. “Actually, it’s expected. And it’s a question of where the changes are and what they do to the behavior of the virus. … It’s very clear that the British one we call has a competitive advantage over the previous one, and that’s why it’s spread and taken over. ‘
Researchers can sequence the genome of viruses, to look at the small changes or mutations and identify how a virus spreads within communities or families.
Most mutations are small and relatively insignificant. But sometimes a significant series of changes can occur that can make a big difference.
Marty Soehnlen, director of infectious diseases at state laboratories that do most of the viral surveillance in Michigan, said her team is always on the lookout for significant changes such as those in the B.1.1.7 variant, and can see how the virus spreads. from one person to another based on the mutations.
“From the public health side, we like it very much for transmission patterns, to figure out how to investigate our outbreaks,” she said. “We’re also looking at resistance markers or the way they can change tests. … Will it cause you to fail to get a positive sample? Or in some cases can you use it to develop new interventions, and it can by “Medication therapy, for vaccination. It can be all different things. So you are constantly watching the changes and trying to figure out what is happening.”
Some changes can also make vaccines ineffective, which is why new flu vaccines are being released annually that target specific strains that are predicted to be in high circulation next season. So far, the research indicates that the current COVID-19 vaccines on the market will still be effective for the B.1.1.7 variant, Lauring said.
Scientists at the laboratories in Lansing have performed nearly 5,700 samples through the day-long process of whole genome sequencing over the past ten months, Blankenship said. This makes them one of the busiest laboratories in the country, and their work accounts for between 6% and 7% of all coronavirus whole genome sequences in the United States.
Samples sent to state laboratories come from across Michigan to ensure surveillance has a widespread geographic base, Soehnlen said. There is particular interest in cases with ‘unusual clinical presentations. So was it a serious illness? Was it an unusual combination? disease? Was there an age difference related to that case – all the different things so we can feed it back for the supervision data that can be used. ‘
What they learn about the samples is uploaded to an international database that researchers from around the world can use to learn more about the virus.
“We are very proud of the numbers we were able to bring out, and we hope we will do more than that,” Soehnlen said. ‘The reason you want to do large numbers, of course, is to be able to take good public health action, and we need data to be able to provide to our epidemiologists so that they can do something for our citizens. ‘
Eleven known coronavirus variants, or clades, characterized by a combination of specific mutations, are currently spreading around the world, Blankenship said.
Ten of them have been identified in Michigan. Now that the British variant has been detected, it means that only the B.1351 variant, also known as the South African variant, has yet to be found in samples from Michigan, she said.
“We’re starting to hear about possible other variants of Japan and Brazil, and we expect these kinds of things to keep evolving,” she said.
And as the virus continues to change, Blankenship, Soehnlen, Lauring and other sentinels of infectious diseases will continue to sound the alarm in their posts.
“When you work in a public health lab, you choose to do something because you see the most interesting cases and try to save lives while doing so,” Soehnlen said.
“People have increased. Everyone has done over time. They do weekends. They take vacations. They do everything necessary, and I think that’s just a beautiful statement about how much people care.”
Contact Kristen Shamus: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @kristenshamus.