Growing variant of COVID-19 found in Kaiser’s outbreak in San Jose

SAN JOSE – A potentially more infectious variant of COVID-19 that is increasingly spreading throughout California is now “relatively common” in Santa Clara County, where it contributed to the infamous Christmas Day outbreak in a Kaiser emergency room and several other outbreaks.

“The variant has been identified in cases from many of these settings, including cases associated with the Kaiser epidemic, outbreaks in skilled nursing facilities, cases in prisons and shelters, and samples from testing sites in the community, ”the county said in a statement sent. to this press organization on Monday.

“This suggests that the variant is now relatively common in our community,” the statement added.

On Sunday evening, Dr Sara Cody, the county’s public health official, joined state and other local health officials in announcing that the 452R variant was behind several of the outbreaks of South Bay, including the one where at least 74 Kaiser employees and 15 patients were infected in the emergency room. from South San Jose Hospital.

A hospital receptionist has died from the Kaiser outbreak, which has been largely attributed to an employee who unexpectedly went to the emergency room to bring some holiday spirit. She was wearing an inflatable Christmas tree costume that could have spread the virus because it used air to circulate energy.

Kaiser confirmed the presence of 452R in the outbreak in a statement Monday, adding that those who tested positive “are now past their contagious period and are no longer showing symptoms.”

At Sunday’s press conference, Santa Clara County officials did not formally link any other outbreaks to the variant, including a series of major outbreaks in county jails and one affecting the Liga football team. ‘San Jose State University before playing and losing a bowling game at the end of a historically successful season.

Monday’s statement linked the tension to other outbreaks, but not to the football team.

In addition to Santa Clara County, the 452R variant has been detected in Humboldt, Lake, Los Angeles, Mono, Monterey, Orange, Riverside, San Francisco, San Bernardino, San Diego, and San Luis Obispo counties.

Cody said more and more of the 452R strain is being detected in the South Bay because Santa Clara County is doing more genomic sequencing than most other counties in California.

“We did more research and therefore more research,” she said.

News of the spread variant comes as viral trends show positive signs, as the rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths reported in California on Sunday slowed from a week ago. At about 39,700 per day, the average daily number of cases in California fell about 11% last week. The state still records an average of 513 deaths a day – more than one every three minutes – but that’s just 7% more than a week ago, compared to a 43.5% increase the previous week.

Scientists at the University of Washington who maintain one of the most widely used and respected computer models for tracking and projecting epidemics also say that new infections appear to have peaked over the past week in the United States and in large states, including California.

But the positive assessment is based on the public embracing social distancing, avoiding gatherings and continuing to wear masks, along with the lack of a vaccine-resistant virus strain and vastly improved vaccine distribution.

Meanwhile, the already difficult inoculation effort hit another snag after a group of people suffered severe allergic reactions to a batch of Moderna vaccines in Southern California, which prompted Dr Erica Pan, the state’s leading epidemiologist, to recommend that clinics put hundreds of thousands of doses on hold.

More than 330,000 doses of this batch have been distributed across the state, and Santa Clara County was among several jurisdictions to announce they were standing out. The county said in a press release that it had no indication that any of the 21,800 doses of the examined lot that ended up with health care providers in South Bay were administered.

Cody said the extent to which the variant considered in the Kaiser outbreak is still under investigation with help from the State Department of Public Health and National Centers for Control and Prevention. diseases.

“It was a very unusual epidemic with a lot of disease, and it seemed to be spreading pretty quickly,” she said. “We are trying to understand if the characteristics of this epidemic are due to this variant … or if it has to do with other factors present in this hospital.”

Kaiser and public health officials stress that the increase in the mutated strain does not justify modifying existing safety protocols and practices to avoid contracting COVID-19.

“We don’t have any signals at this point that this variant is associated with anything else like increased disease severity, although of course we are looking for signals to see if that emerges,” Cody said.