NORTH CHARLESTON, SC – South Carolina was already experiencing one of the country’s worst coronavirus outbreaks when authorities received news this week of an alarming development: a new, more worrying variant of the virus, originally identified in South Africa, was detected in the state.
Shortly thereafter, a second case was discovered with no known connection to the first, state officials announced on Thursday.
None of the patients had a travel history, officials said, suggesting that what many public health experts feared happened: the new variant of the virus took root in the United States.
The arrival of the variant – considered highly contagious and less responsive to vaccines – highlights the unstable progress that the country has made in its battle against the virus. Even with millions of people being vaccinated, and the country swaying down a slope of more than 150,000 new cases of coronavirus a day, new mutations of the virus are threatening to undermine the little progress the country has made.
“It’s a pivotal moment,” said Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California, who studies immunity against infectious diseases. “It is a race with the new variants to get a large number of people vaccinated before these variants are spread.”
Pat Kearns, 87, was sitting in his car at a congested parking clinic in North Charleston on Friday after receiving his own coronavirus vaccine amid news that the new variant had appeared.
“This virus is much faster than us,” said his daughter Teresa. Pat Kearns, a retired radiologic nurse, said that even after receiving both injections, she had few plans to venture out immediately. “I will stay where I am,” she said. “Staying safe.”
The South Africa variant, known as B.1.351, is one of several mutations that emerged as the pandemic dragged on. Others include a variant from Brazil, which was detected in Minnesota this week, and one from Britain, which is spreading more widely in the United States.
Variants are believed to be more contagious, and South Africa’s is among the most worrying because preliminary research suggests that vaccines may be less effective against it.
Both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech – the companies that manufacture the two vaccines currently on the U.S. market – said their vaccines are somewhat less protective against the South African variant, and companies are considering creating a booster injection or a new version to avoid the variant.
Likewise, Johnson & Johnson, the only major pharmaceutical company that develops a single-dose coronavirus vaccine, announced on Friday that its injection would provide strong protection against Covid-19 if approved, with an efficacy rate of 72 percent in the United States. But it is less effective against the new variant – dropping to 57% in South Africa.
Although this variant appears to partially escape the antibodies built against Covid-19, experts say vaccines, in general, should still be effective. Research suggests that even when a vaccinated person becomes ill, vaccines can help reduce the severity of Covid-19.
“Vaccines are not all or nothing,” said Dr. Crotty, who compared getting an injection against the virus by hitting the brake during a car accident, in which even partial braking – or the vaccine’s effectiveness – is much better than none.
But in a worrying development, the variant may also follow a less defined pattern than the traditional version of Covid-19, which is believed to have offered at least short-term immunity for people who have become ill. Novavax, a fourth company that develops a vaccine, reported that in a small trial in South Africa, about a third of participants had already been infected with Covid-19, but the results suggested that their previous illnesses did not protect them from the new variant.
Although President Biden banned travel from South Africa as of Saturday, the variant could spread significantly in the United States and could represent a large part of his infections until April.
The ventures crashed in South Carolina, which is experiencing one of the worst outbreaks in the country, second only to Arizona. “The fight against this deadly virus is far from over,” said South Carolina’s acting director of public health, Dr. Brannon Traxler, during a news conference announcing the new cases. “We should all be more vigilant.”
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Answers to your vaccine questions
Currently, more than 150 million people – almost half the population – can be vaccinated. But each state makes the final decision about who goes first. The country’s 21 million health workers and three million residents in long-term care facilities were the first to qualify. In mid-January, federal authorities urged all states to open eligibility for everyone aged 65 and over and adults of any age with medical conditions that put them at high risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from Covid-19. Adults in the general population are at the rear of the line. If federal and state health officials can resolve bottlenecks in vaccine distribution, everyone aged 16 and over will be eligible as early as this spring or early summer. The vaccine has not been approved in children, although studies are ongoing. It may take months before a vaccine is available to anyone under the age of 16. Go to your state’s health website for up-to-date information on vaccination policies in your area
You should not have to pay anything out of your pocket to get the vaccine, although insurance information is requested. Even if you do not have insurance, you should receive the vaccine free of charge. Congress passed legislation this spring that prohibits insurers from applying any cost sharing, such as copayment or deductibles. He imposed additional protections, preventing pharmacies, doctors and hospitals from charging patients, including those without insurance. Even so, health experts fear that patients may run into loopholes that leave them vulnerable to unexpected bills. This can happen for those who pay a medical consultation fee with their vaccine, or Americans who have certain types of health coverage that do not fall under the new rules. If you get the vaccine at a doctor’s office or urgent care clinic, talk to them about possible hidden costs. To make sure you don’t get a surprise bill, the best bet is to get your vaccine at a vaccination post in the health department or at a local pharmacy as soon as the vaccines are more widely available.
This must be determined. It is possible that Covid-19 vaccines will become an annual event, as well as the flu vaccine. Or it may be that the benefits of the vaccine last for more than a year. We have to wait and see how durable vaccine protection is. To determine this, the researchers will screen vaccinated people for “innovative cases” – those who fall ill with Covid-19 despite the vaccination. This is a sign of weakened protection and will give researchers clues as to how long the vaccine lasts. They will also monitor the levels of antibodies and T cells in the blood of vaccinated people to determine whether and when a booster injection may be needed. It is conceivable that people need reinforcements every few months, once a year or just every few years. It is just a matter of waiting for the data.
Although new infections have declined from a peak this month, South Carolina is now reporting more new cases and has more people in hospitals than at any time last year. It is also reporting most deaths from the entire pandemic.
It is unclear what role the new variant may be playing in the spread in South Carolina, where officials have warned against panic and said that contact tracking does not indicate “widespread mass transmission”.
But the new variant only increased the stakes for the state, where Governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, took a largely indirect approach to virus restrictions, keeping restaurants and bars open and avoiding a statewide mask order in one strategy. that he characterized as good for the economy. South Carolina’s unemployment dropped to 4.6%, below the national average.
But experts say controlling the spread of the virus is crucial to stopping any new variant before a potential explosion of cases leads to even more hospitalizations and deaths.
“We need to control the pandemic,” said Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an assistant professor of medicine and infectious medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, who often goes off duty treating Covid-19 patients at the hospital just to see crowded bars. way home.
“I don’t want to be sitting here next year talking about an even tougher virus,” she said, adding, “We need to find a renewed decision to come together and get to the finish line.”
At Roper St. Francis Healthcare, which has four hospitals in the southeastern part of the state, 17 percent of the beds were filled to capacity with patients with Covid-19 on Friday, and others were entering a clinic run by the hospital system. Dozens lined up in cars on a stormy Friday morning to receive the first of Pfizer’s two vaccines, filling ample parking at the North Charleston Performing Arts and Convention Center.
“Demand has been off the charts,” said James Bowron, chief operating officer at Roper St. Francis. “We are being inundated with orders.”
Lynn Bauman was relieved to receive the vaccine on Friday, but said she has no plans to change her routine. “We still have to wear our masks and wash our hands,” she said. “It will be like this for a while.”
In a sign of the country’s great progress, many people who now call for an appointment in South Carolina may have to wait weeks to be vaccinated. At the North Charleston clinic, consultations are not available until mid-March, when new variants of the virus are expected to be much more widespread.
Chris Dixon reported from North Charleston, and Sarah Mervosh of New York.