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As the total number of coronavirus infections in California approaches 3 million, health officials said on Sunday that a new strain – different from a highly contagious variant first identified in the UK – is emerging more frequently in the state.
Researchers have identified the strain in a dozen counties and linked it to several large outbreaks in Santa Clara County. The California Department of Public Health said it was not yet clear whether the variant was highly contagious or if it was simply identified frequently as lab work became more sophisticated.
Santa Clara County labs that study changes in the virus genome sequence have found the strain in samples from community testing sites and outbreaks where “a huge number of people exposed have contracted the virus.” officials said.
“This virus continues to mutate and adapt, and we cannot let our guard down,” Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County health official and director of the public health department, said in a statement. prepare.
The new variant has also been reported in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Francisco, San Bernardino, San Diego, Humboldt, Lake, Mono, Monterey, and San Luis Obispo counties.
Scientists say they don’t know how widespread the strain is because viral genomic sequencing isn’t done all over the state or across the country.
The variant carries three mutations in the spike protein, which the virus uses to attach and enter cells, said Dr. Charles Chiu, a virologist at UC San Francisco.
The two COVID-19 vaccines on the market in the United States, produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, train the body’s immune system to target the spike protein. This means that in theory viral mutations could alter the spike protein to such an extent that vaccines become less effective.
Chiu said the researchers are prioritizing the study of the variant and working to determine whether the virus is “more infectious or affects the performance of the vaccine.”
The variant is not the same as the highly contagious strain first identified last month in the UK. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Friday that the British variant, known as B117, could become the dominant coronavirus strain in the United States by March because it is spreading so quickly.
Los Angeles County confirmed its first case of the B117 variant on Saturday in a man who had spent time in the county but is now isolated in Oregon.
On Sunday, the total number of California residents who tested positive for the coronavirus reached 2.96 million.
In LA County, authorities reported 108 deaths and 11,366 new positive cases on Sunday, bringing the total to 13,848 deaths and just over one million cases. Officials have warned that the data released on Sunday could be artificially low due to a delay in reporting over the holiday weekend.
So many people have died in Los Angeles County that authorities have temporarily suspended air quality regulations that limit the number of cremations. LA County health officials and coroner have called for the change because the current death rate is “more than double that of pre-pandemic years, resulting in hospitals, funeral homes, and crematoriums overshooting capacity,” without the ability to deal with the backlog, ”the South Coast Air Quality Management District said Sunday.
In at least a ray of hope, the number of people in LA County hospitalized with COVID-19 fell this week from 7,910 on Monday to 7,498 on Sunday, from a peak of just over 8,000, said health officials. About 23% of hospitalized patients are in intensive care.
The share of people who took a coronavirus test and tested positive also fell slightly, from 16.5% on Monday to 14%. Officials say the drop could be a sign that infections are starting to wane after a post-vacation flare.
Meanwhile, in Orange County, health officials have reported 1,448 new cases and 47 deaths. County totals now stand at 210,813 cases and 2,367 deaths.
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