A registered nurse obtains the second coronavirus vaccine from a health nurse in Grass Valley, California. | Elias Funez / The Union via AP
OAKLAND – More than two dozen new cases of the coronavirus strain that have emerged in the UK have already been identified in San Diego County, while health officials warn that the potentially more contagious variant probably already exists elsewhere in the state.
The county health agency said on Tuesday that 24 new cases had been confirmed through genome sequencing of samples collected from December 27 to 31. Four additional positive tests directly linked to these confirmed cases should show the same strain, known as B .1.1.7. This is by far the largest number of cases detected in California to date.
The mutant variant was confirmed by Governor Gavin Newsom as having appeared in San Diego County last week, shortly after his presence in the United States was first documented in Colorado. The strain’s potential for wider dissemination can lead to more fatalities, even though the variant itself may not be more deadly to a patient who contracts it.
The new strain has become a major cause for concern in a state that has seen a record increase since November. Hospitals are crowded in Southern California and the Central Valley, forcing health officials to ration patient care in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, as in many states, the vaccine’s launch in California has been slow – to the point that Newsom admitted on Monday that “it was not good enough”.
None of the 24 confirmed patients in San Diego County, aged 10 to 70 years, are believed to have a history of recent travel, pointing to an increase in the spread of the strain in the community. Authorities say none of the infected individuals died and a woman is recovering at home after being hospitalized.
Emerging variants of the coronavirus, including another strain recently discovered in South Africa, are believed to be more contagious than the virus that has already wreaked havoc in California, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of Tuesday, four cases have been identified in San Diego County and two in San Bernardino County, although health officials in other regions have recognized that sample genome sequencing is in progress and that sample sizes so far are small.
“We imagine, in fact, we should just anticipate, that there will be others identified,” Newsom said on Monday, after announcing new cases in San Diego and San Bernardino.
In Los Angeles County, director of public health Barbara Ferrer told supervisors on Tuesday that the UK variant has probably infected people there and that it is only a matter of time before its presence is confirmed.
Los Angeles health officials have only sequenced 80 samples so far, none of which contained UK genetic markers or South African variants. However, Ferrer warned that the sequencing process takes several days and the large number of cases in the county creates little chance of avoiding the new strains.
“We anticipate, given the number of people testing positive here in LA County, that the variant is probably here and as we continue to test, and the CDC runs some tests on some of our samples, we are likely to find it.”
Los Angeles County has already been devastated by a holiday wave of the original coronavirus strain, with new cases in the range of 13,000 to 15,000 a day and hundreds of individuals succumbing to the virus in the past few days.
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health made the announcement gloomy that the total number of deaths had reached 11,000.
The current increase in cases in the region – a 905 percent increase since November 1, according to Ferrer – has been linked to the Thanksgiving holiday and does not yet include an even more deadly wave predicted after hundreds of thousands of residents traveled during Christmas and New Year.
The county’s overburdened hospitals and the Emergency Medical Services Agency had to make decisions about who will receive care in the absence of beds, with ambulance teams instructed not to transport patients whose hearts have stopped and cannot be restarted in the field.
Hospitals around Los Angeles have also suffered from oxygen scarcity, which has led EMS to circulate a memo on Monday that only patients with oxygen saturation levels below 90 percent should receive supplemental supply.
San Francisco Public Health Director Grant Colfax said on Tuesday that the new strain has yet to be detected in that county. But “we wouldn’t be surprised if and when it was detected in San Francisco or the region,” he said at a news conference.
Colfax said several laboratories, including the University of California, San Francisco, are conducting genome tests in an effort to detect the new strain. “Unfortunately there is not much capacity to do this, so only a small number of samples are sent to the laboratories for this subtyping,” he said.
Health officials in Fresno County also said the UK variant has not yet been identified in the region, but that the chances of it being found in the near future are significant.
Victoria Colliver contributed to this story.