The new, potentially more contagious coronavirus strain that has caused concern in Europe has been detected in Big Bear, bringing the total number of such cases in California to at least six, officials announced Friday.
The variant was found in two members of the same household who were tested for the virus on Dec. 20, the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health said in a news release. One of them had contact with a traveler who returned from Britain on December 11 and started getting COVID-19 symptoms three days later.
An investigation was still underway to determine if the traveler, also a resident of the Big Bear area, also had the variant, or infected others, provincial officials said Saturday. Four other cases were identified in San Diego County this week.
The United States now requires travelers to provide proof of a negative coronavirus test before flying out of the UK, but the rule only came into effect on Monday.
This came after the news about the tension, known as B.1.1.7, was announced before Christmas in England and confirmed for the first time in Colorado on Tuesday. Florida also reported a case.
According to experts, there is no evidence that the variant is more deadly, causes serious diseases or renders existing vaccines ineffective.
Yet it seems that a characteristic set of genetic changes can more easily transmit the virus from person to person and improve the ability to sneak past the defenses of the immune system, and this raises fears that it could make new cases rise even faster, as a slow explosion struggles. getting underway and many hospitals are already overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients.
“Based on the available information, we know that the B.1.1.7 variant spreads more easily and faster,” said dr. Michael Bernardque County Health Officer Michael Sequeira said in a statement. “That’s why it’s more important than ever to follow all safe practices.”
Scientists are not yet sure how common the variant is in the US, but evidence shows that it may already be spreading in some communities.
The first U.S. case, a Colorado National Guardsman in his twenties, sent to help a Simla nursing home deal with an outbreak, did not travel outside the country, officials said. According to authorities, it is suspected that a second member of the Guard also has the variant.
On Wednesday, officials announced that the variant was first identified in California, in a San Diego County man in his thirties who also had no recent travel history. Tests were pending to determine if one of the man’s domestic contacts had the variant after the person with COVID-19 was admitted to the hospital, officials said.
The next day, provincial health officials said they believed the tension was widespread in the area: the order of the entire genome confirmed three more cases in men who had no contact with each other.
The men – two in their 40s and one in his 50s – also had no interaction with the first confirmed case. Two of them did not travel outside the country; the third has yet to be fully questioned, officials said.
Altogether, the four cases of the variant have been detected in communities spread across San Diego County: La Mesa, Mission Beach, Otay Mesa and the Carmel Mountain area, indicating that it has already gained a foothold in the region, officials said.
“We believe that many more cases of the B.1.1.7 strain will be confirmed in the coming days and weeks,” said Dr. Eric McDonald, a provincial public health official, said in a statement.
Officials have yet to find evidence of the variant in Los Angeles County, the state’s most populous province and hardest hit by the virus. But that does not mean it is not in circulation, warns Barbara Ferrer, director of public health.
“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 sequencing,” Ferrer said during an information session earlier this week.
Florida on Thursday became the third state to announce that it had identified the variant, in a Martin County man in his twenties who had not traveled recently.
Experts believe that the development is no surprise: viruses tend to mutate the more they repeat. Most mutations have no effect on the action of a virus, but sometimes it can change the way a virus behaves.
In this case, the changes may have made the virus up to 70% more transmissible, prompting a rapid spread of new cases in London and the south of England, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said last month when he renewed lock-in measures in much of the country. announced the country. The discovery also prompted other countries to restrict or ban travel from Britain.
However, some scientists are skeptical that the genetic changes in the tribe make it more contagious and say that more study is needed to determine whether other factors, such as population density, varying degrees of disguise and varying compliance with social rules, could accelerate the spread of explain the variant in England.
Times writers Melissa Healey, Rong-Gong Lin II and Luke Money contributed to this report.