A mutant and more contagious strain of coronavirus that aroused great concern when it first emerged in the United Kingdom arrived in California, Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Wednesday.
San Diego County officials said tests showed that a 30-year-old resident contracted the strain in the first confirmed case of the variant in California, a day after the sequence was first discovered on American soil in Colorado. The Southern California man hasn’t traveled recently, officials said – a sign that, despite efforts to contain the mutation in Europe, it may already be spreading locally.
Governor Gavin Newsom announced the news during a virtual meeting with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
There are no signs that the mutant strain causes more serious cases of the disease, say Fauci and other specialists in contagious diseases, and the first indications are that it can be fought with the emerging range of vaccines.
But a more transmissible strain can lead to more infections and deaths as the virus strikes those who are most vulnerable to it. And an increase in the number of patients with COVID-19 can worsen the pressure on an already overburdened medical system, making it more likely that people with the virus will die if crowded hospitals cannot provide the care that patients need.
The precautions that people should take to prevent the spread of the latest strain are the same as the authorities have recommended for months in the fight against the coronavirus – use a face mask and avoid contact with people outside your home.
“If we continue to do these things – no matter how transmissible this virus is – it will lose,” said John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at Berkeley Public Health. “Don’t change anything, just do what you should be doing all the time.”
Fauci said mutations and new strains of the virus are expected during a pandemic.
“I’m not surprised that you have a case and probably more cases in California. We will probably see reports from other states, ”said Fauci. “I don’t think Californians should think this is weird.”
Coronavirus is an RNA virus, and such viruses “live off the mutation,” said Fauci. Most mutations do not change the way the virus acts, but “every now and then, you get a mutation that affects the virus’s function”.
“It seems,” said Fauci, “from what we have learned in the UK and what we will learn here that this mutation actually makes the virus better at transmitting from one person to another.”
Researchers still don’t know exactly why this is happening, said Swartzberg. One of the main suspects is the “peak” proteins in the virus, which may have mutated to bind more easily to the cells of a potential host. The mutation can also cause infected people to release more of the virus.
The end result, said Swartzberg, is “that (infected) person is more likely to spread to someone else”.
Fauci said that people who were already infected with the coronavirus also appear to have immunity to this strain. Scientists will assess the effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccine on the new strain, Fauci said, but a single mutation is unlikely to impact the vaccine’s effectiveness.
The new strain has not escaped detection in diagnostic tests. At the national level, however, the United States has not developed a robust operation to sequence viruses and check for genetic mutations. According to an analysis by the Washington Post, 42 other counties have sequenced more infections than the United States, despite the overwhelming number of cases in the country.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.