California discovers first cases of variant coronavirus in South Africa

• California Latest State to Report Most Communicable Coronavirus Variant Found in South Africa
• The variant, first identified in October, has been found in at least four US states.
• The variant appears to partially evade immunity acquired in response to vaccines or infection with the original virus.
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Once South African scientists detected a more infectious variant of the coronavirus in early October, scientists knew it was only a matter of time before the strain reached the United States.

In late January, the United States reported its first two cases of the new variant, called B.1.351, in South Carolina.

California became the last state to report its own B.1.351 cases on Wednesday. During a press conference, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Stanford University had detected two cases in the San Francisco Bay Area: one in Alameda County and another in Santa Clara County . He did not provide further details.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also identified six cases of B.1.351 in Maryland and one in Virginia.

The variant is not spreading as widely as B.1.1.7, another more infectious strain first identified in the UK in September. The CDC has so far reported more than 930 cases of B.1.1.7 in 34 states.

Coronavirus vaccines still appear to be very effective against B.1.1.7, but scientists are more concerned with B.1.351 because preliminary research has shown that it may partially escape the protection offered by current vaccines.

Moderna, for example, exposed blood samples from people who had received the company’s vaccine to B.1.351. They found that these samples developed six times less virus neutralizing antibodies than samples exposed to other variants. The company is now investigating the possibility of a custom designed booster shot to neutralize B.1.351.

Scientists are also concerned that people who already had COVID-19 could be re-infected with this more transmissible strain.

A race to stop B.1.351 from spreading

Nardus Engelbrecht / AP Photos

The United States genetically sequence only 0.01% of its coronavirus cases – about three in 1,000 cases. That places the country 33rd in the world for genetic sequencing, according to the latest data from GISAID, a global database that collects the genomes of coronaviruses.

This lack of sequencing means that new variants can easily spread without being detected in the population. In all likelihood, B.1.351 entered the United States long before South Carolina reported its first cases. None of these people had traveled recently, nor any personal connection between them.

Even people who have already contracted COVID-19 could be susceptible, the evidence shows. A recent study of Novavax’s vaccine candidate found that cases of B.1.351 were just as common in people who had previously recovered from infections with other strains than those who had not.

“If it becomes dominant, the experience of our colleagues in South Africa indicates that even if you have been infected with the original virus, there is a very high rate of reinfection”, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN last week.

This possibility, combined with the increased transmissibility of B.1.351, could lead to a further increase in coronavirus cases, scientists warn. The variant doesn’t appear to be more deadly than the original strain, however.

“When more contagious variants circulate and people now feel free to do things that they haven’t been able to do for a while, we risk seeing another surge in the near future”, Anne Rimoin , professor of epidemiology at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, recently told Insider. “So we have to watch him carefully.”

For now, scientists are hoping that vaccinations and other public health measures will be enough to prevent B.1.351 from becoming the dominant strain in the United States. More genetic sequencing, they add, could prevent future variants from spreading.

“We have to find ways to deal with this rather than constantly chasing behind without good supervision,” Rimoin said. Otherwise, she added, “we are doomed to make the same mistakes.”