New variant of coronavirus could be in the United States since October | World news

A coronavirus variant carrying some of the same mutations as the highly contagious British variant could be in the United States since October and already widespread, suggests a re-analysis of more than 2 million tests.

Genome sequencing to confirm whether the variant seen in Americans is the same as the so-called B117 variant currently circulating in the UK is underway.

Results are expected in a few days, but the revelations have raised new questions about the origin of the modified virus, including a small possibility that it started in the United States, not the United Kingdom or elsewhere. The variant has also been found in at least 17 countries, including South Korea, Spain, Australia and Canada.

“It would not be at all surprising if at least some of the cases were B117,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, Calif., Who was not involved in the research but whose team confirmed a Californian case of the B117 variant on Wednesday.

“He’s probably been there for quite some time at low levels – but you don’t see him until you look for him.”

The existence of a new, highly transmissible variant of Sars CoV-2 was announced by the British Secretary of Health on December 14, after Covid testing labs reported that an increasing number of their positive samples were missing a signal one of the three genes in their PCR. tests used to confirm the presence of the virus.

Further sequencing revealed that such “disappearance of the S gene” was the result of mutations in the gene encoding the spike protein that the virus uses to enter human cells. The variant is believed to have been circulating in the UK since September.

News of the new variant has led several countries to restrict travel from the UK – or, in the case of the US, to require travelers to show proof of a negative Covid-19 test for be allowed to enter the country. However, the first known cases in the United States were detected earlier this week in Colorado and California, and it is suspected that it is already widespread.

In the dying hours of December 31, a third U.S. state, Florida, officially reported a variant case of the coronavirus, a man in his 20s in Martin County, north of West Palm Beach, who no ‘had no recent travel history, the Florida Health department told the.

To investigate, scientists at the California-based DNA testing company Helix looked at the prevalence of S gene drop out among 2 million Covid tests the company has processed in recent months. They observed an increase in S gene dropout among positive samples since early October, when 0.25% of positive tests showed this pattern.

It has since increased, averaging 0.5% last week – although in Massachusetts, which has the largest number of such samples, it currently stands at 1.85%, although no cases of the variant B117 has not yet been announced in this state.

Further analysis revealed mutations in some of the same regions of the S gene that are also present in the B117 variant – although complete sequencing of the viral genome is needed to confirm whether they are indeed the same variant or something else.

The coronavirus pandemic is out of control in the United States, with the 24-hour death toll of more than 3,740 earlier this week signifying the worst day of the outbreak in the country yet.

Public health experts and Joe Biden, the Democratic President-elect, have warned the situation will get worse before it gets better, even if the vaccines go into effect.

Helix is ​​currently working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pending test results on the variant found in the United States.

“If we see the [B117 variant], then we might be able to see if it’s been introduced to the United States one or more times, or if it has mutated more, ”said Nicole Washington, associate director of research at Helix, whose research has has been published as a pre-print and has not yet been peer reviewed.

“If all the samples have it, then it’s probably been around for a while, but if only one or two samples have it, maybe it’s been recently introduced and we’re just at the beginning. to see it spread. ”

It is also possible that the variant originated in the United States and then spread to the United Kingdom – although this is unlikely, given that the B117 variant appears to be more prevalent in England, Topol said. “However, I don’t think it should be known as the British variant as we don’t know where it came from.

If B117 is really widely established in the United States, the travel bans are unlikely to work, Topol added: “The variant is likely to become dominant. [within the US] in the next few months what we need to do is outrun it through a combination of very strict mitigation measures, including surveillance and testing, and vaccination as if there is no tomorrow ”, did he declare. “The vaccines should work well.”

Even though the variant identified by Helix is ​​not B117, the nature of some of the mutations it contains is of concern as they may increase the virus’s ability to infect human cells, added Ravi Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge. , UK, who helped sequence the B117 variant.

Meanwhile, the United States is a long way from meeting targets set by the United States government for the number of people it hopes to be vaccinated by the end of 2020.

Leading US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci on Thursday called on the federal government to deploy more resources to vaccinate Americans.

As public health departments in overworked and underfunded states scrambled to administer vaccines, some seniors waited overnight to receive their first dose in Florida.

“We would have liked to have seen it run smoothly and have 20 million doses in people… by the end of 2020, which was the projection. Obviously that didn’t happen and it’s disappointing, ”Fauci told NBC on Thursday.