How concerned should California be about the new, potentially more contagious variant of the coronavirus being discovered here?
The variant has caused deep concern in Europe after being discovered in England just before Christmas. The first reported U.S. case of the variant COVID-19 was detected in Colorado. Although the development is worrying, some say it is not necessarily worrying.
This is what we know:
Variant is no surprise
Experts, including dr. Anthony Fauci, says the variant is no surprise, but they also say that the new strain could change the way the virus behaves.
“I do not think Californians should feel that this is something strange,” Fauci said. “It’s expected.”
Mutations in the coronavirus are not unpredictable, he said, as he “the more you repeat, the more you mutate. So if there are a lot of viruses in the community, it means it infects a lot of people; it repeats a lot.”
The ‘overwhelming majority of mutations are irrelevant,’ he continued, but ‘occasionally you get a mutation that affects a function of the virus.’
“It appears,” he added, “from what we have learned in the United Kingdom and what we will prove here, that this particular mutation indeed makes the virus better at transmitting from one person to another.”
However, some scientists are more skeptical about it genetic changes in the strain, known as B.1.1.7, makes it more contagious. There are other possible explanations for the rapid spread of the variant in England, such as its spread through dense communities and among people who are less likely to wear masks and wear social distance.
Either way, “there is no indication at all that it increases virulence … the ability to make you sick or kill you,” Fauci said of the variant, adding that existing vaccines also appear to be effective. stay.
When England struggled with this, some experts told The Times that they did not think it would be a problem in terms of vaccinations. Dr Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist from Johns Hopkins University, said that if the genetic changes had an effect on COVID-19 vaccines, it would be minimal.
“I’m not alarmed by this,” Casadevall said.
Even changes that significantly alter the ear protein of the virus do not affect many other targets, called epitopes, that use antibodies to recognize and kill virus.
‘The virus must therefore be completely defeated [a] vaccine, it will have to change in many, many places where the virus binds to cells, ”he said. “And this is a very low probability event.”
California patient did not travel overseas
He’s a San Diego man in his thirties.
Dr. Eric McDonald, medical director of the San Diego County Department of Epidemiology, said the man did not report any overseas travel before becoming ill, nor did any of the two Colorado patients. Travel history was not yet available for the second person there.
Absent evidence of travel, it would appear that those with confirmed infections have picked up the virus in their communities, which strongly suggests that the British tribe is more widespread than first believed.
“There are other cases in San Diego that we need to be aware of,” McDonald said.
The San Diego topic apparently obeyed the current home series.
“If we go back two weeks, the number of activities was also very limited,” McDonald said. “There was no work activity, and there was no specific meeting … that we talked about the possibility of a community outbreak.”
Because he had no travel history, “we believe this is not an isolated case in San Diego County,” Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said during a news conference Wednesday.
“While it has been pointed out that there is still no evidence that the strain has severe symptoms,” Fletcher said, “there is significant evidence that it spreads significantly faster, and that it is much more contagious.”
This is all the more reason, he added, that provincial officials “continue to encourage the public and plead with the public to please … especially during the next 72 hours and the New Year’s holiday to follow the public health order.”
More powerful voltage suspected
Officials suspect that the large spread in this region could be a more powerful strain.
But it has not yet been detected.
Officials have yet to find any evidence of the variant in Los Angeles County, where the coronavirus is already hitting particularly hard, according to Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer.
“That does not mean the variant does not spread in LA County,” she warned during a briefing on Wednesday. “There are thousands and thousands of people being tested every day, and we can only sample a small number of the test results and do the gene sequence.”
Whether the variant is current, she added, “does not change the need for all of us to use the strategies we currently have available to limit the exposure and spread of the virus.”
Winkley and Sisson write for the San Diego Union Tribune. Times author Melissa Healy contributed to this report.