Covid variant easier to spread in the USA Amps Up Vaccine Urgency

Photographer: Eric Lee / Bloomberg

An easier-to-spread variant of Covid-19 detected in the United States for the first time last week could intensify the increase in the virus, if it hasn’t already, increasing the urgency for a faster and more effective vaccine injection.

Only three states – Colorado, California and Florida – have identified cases of the mutant strain that has been occurring in the UK for months. But U.S. health officials say they still don’t know how far the variant may have traveled in the U.S., or what it might mean for the future.

“I suspect it is more widespread than we know,” said Michelle Barron, senior medical director of infection prevention and control at UCHealth, a healthcare system with a dozen hospitals and hundreds of clinics in Colorado. “It’s a ‘if you look, you’ll find’ function.”

The discovery of the mutant strain in the United States comes at a time when the initiative to vaccinate most Americans has been hampered by ineffective coordination and a lack of federal support for states and healthcare systems. Although more than 4.28 million Americans were vaccinated by Saturday night, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker, this is far less than the 20 million doses that U.S. health officials predicted for the end of 2020.

Meanwhile, the number of infections is increasing, with almost 231,000 new cases reported in the U.S. on the Thursday before the holiday weekend, when notification can be sporadic. Four states – including New York and California – exceeded 1 million infections in total, and more than 350,000 Americans died.

“It’s a race, and that variant made the whole challenge more formidable,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California. “Everything we saw in 2020 in terms of a challenging virus, will be taken to a new level.”

Distributing vaccines it has been a challenge for the health care system in the United States affected by a simultaneous increase in infections. State and local governments are struggling with complex logistics to keep vaccines cool, deciding who should have early access and persuading vaccine skeptics.

To increase the amount of vaccine available, the United States government is considering cutting the dose of Moderna Inc. fired at those 18 to 55, said Moncef Slaoui, scientific director of Operation Warp Speed, on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. He said there is evidence showing that the half dose provides the same level of protection for this age group.

Slaoui’s comments came in response to a question about the UK’s decision to give as many people as possible the first dose of a Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, although possibly delaying a second dose. He said such a move would be a mistake for the United States, as it has not been confirmed by test data.

CDC Studies

Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are currently trying to model the effect the variant could have on accelerated spread, according to Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the agency. At the moment, however, “we have no results,” said Nordlund by email.

Before November, only a select number of cases in the United States had been sequenced, a laboratory procedure that can determine the genetic makeup of the pathogen as it travels through the population. Since then, however, the CDC has launched a national program to detect new strains, said Greg Armstrong, director of the CDC’s advanced molecular detection program.

CDC is now in scale up until sequence 750 samples on its own each week, according to Armstrong, and the agency is partnering with laboratories across the country to map the genetic material of about 1,750 virus samples weekly.

The agency is also exploring whether the mutations could make existing treatments less effective, according to Henry Walke, CDC’s Covid-19 incident manager. Still, there is no reason why measures like wearing a mask and social distance are less effective in preventing transmission of the new strain, he said during a call with reporters last week.

Mutant viruses

Viruses have the opportunity to change through mutations that arise naturally as they replicate and circulate in their hosts. Some, like the flu, evolve rapidly with thousands of mutations and different strains, while others are more stable.

The new variant, known scientifically as B.1.1.7, contains a large number of mutations, which is unusual, said Andy Pekosz, director of the Center for Emerging Viruses and Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University. A particular concern is the change in the spike protein, which binds to human cells, allowing the virus to enter.

Scientists suspect that these mutations are making it easier for the spike protein to bind. The new strain is believed to be 57% to 70% more transmissible than other strains of the virus.

UK prevalence

In the United Kingdom, the new variant was responsible for 62% of Covid-19 infections in London in the week ending December 9, compared to 28% in early November, according to Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at Norwich School of Medicine, University of East Anglia. Cases have also been identified in more than a dozen other countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Singapore and South Korea.

In Colorado, state scientists are trying to do complete genetic sequencing on any sample that shows signs of the UK variant, according to state scientific director Emily Travanty. The samples are signaled when only two of the three genes targeted by the gold standard PCR tests used by the state are found, indicating that a mutation has occurred in the third – the critical peak protein.

The missing gene is present, according to Travanty, but has become undetectable by the test because of the mutation, making it a signature for the variant, she said. When laboratories encounter this red flag, it indicates that more research is needed.

Very unknown

“We haven’t known about this variant for a long time,” Colorado Governor Jared Polis said last week after the first American case was discovered in his state. “But if it is transmitted more quickly, more people will be infected and more people will be hospitalized.”

Still, there are some positive findings related to the variant. Apparently, it is no longer deadly, although if more people are infected, there will be more deaths. And you cannot imagine being able to overcome the two vaccines that are already being distributed in the USA, the Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech SE shot, and the Shot from Moderna Inc ..

“There is good news here,” said Topol. “It will not affect the vaccine’s effectiveness. That’s why there is this race. If we anticipate and vaccinate everyone, if we do it quickly, we will have the virus under control ”.

Transmission Speed

Meanwhile, in the UK, the additional transmission speed that was thought to be related to the new strain was noticeable. The number of new cases has increased dramatically in recent weeks, even as the country institutes increasingly strong blocks, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the Minnesota University.

In the United States, wearing masks and social detachment are often more of a political issue than public health, with at least one adviser to President Donald Trump suggesting that collective immunity, which occurs when sufficient numbers of people become immune to a disease to make it unlikely to spread, can be achieved by simply leaving the disease free.