Two days after the Los Angeles Department of Public Health announced that the so-called UK variant of Covid-19, known as B.1.1.7, had been identified in the region, the California Department of Public Health revealed that another smallest known strain was circulating in the county as well.
Known as the L452R, the newly announced arrival was first identified in Denmark in March last year. He appeared in California as early as May 2020.
According to the California Department of Public Health, Santa Clara County has sequenced a large number of positive samples collected at community test sites and outbreaks in the county. L452R was present in specimens from the community and from several large outbreaks, including outbreaks in which a very high number of exposed people contracted the virus.
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“This variant has been identified in several major outbreaks in our county,” said Santa Clara County Health Officer, Dr. Sara Cody. She called this correlation “a red flag and should be investigated further.”
Dr Charles Chiu, virologist and professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF who has been genetically sequencing test samples to identify new variants, said that the L452R grew from about 3.8% of the samples tested from late November 2020 to the beginning from December to more than 25.2% at the end of December until the beginning of January 2021.
The L452R variant affects the virus’s peak protein, so there is a chance that the vaccines currently developed will be less effective against it, said Chiu. The vaccines now being administered in the United States were designed to give people immunity by inhibiting the virus’s spike protein.
An article on Cell.com says that L452R “decreased sensitivity to neutralizing mAbs (monoclonal antibodies)”, which are used in vaccines currently approved to inhibit connections between peak virus proteins and infected cells.
Chiu said that early studies of the L452R protein spike mutation indicate that it is less susceptible to neutralizing antibodies in vaccines.
The new variant has also been detected in Los Angeles, Mono, Monterey, Orange, Riverside, San Francisco, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Humboldt and Lake counties. As genomic sequencing is sparse, it is currently unknown how L452 is prevalent across the state, nationally or globally.
“This variant carries three mutations, including L452R, in the protein spike, which the virus uses to bind and enter cells, and is the target of the two vaccines that are currently available in the United States,” said Dr. Chiu.
And there may be another problem with one of these vaccines.
California state epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan said on Sunday that “more than normal” numbers of people had apparent allergic reactions to a batch of Moderna’s vaccine at a clinic in the San Diego area.
“For extreme caution,” Pan recommended that clinics stop using the doses for that specific batch until investigated.
California received about 330,000 doses of the batch in question. This is equivalent to approximately 10% of all vaccine distributed to date across the state.
On Monday, the state’s numbers mostly fell, with just over 30,000 new cases, 201 new deaths, 20,968 hospitalized virus patients and 1,113 available ICU beds. The latter is the smallest number of ICU beds available during the pandemic and is therefore a cause for concern.
There is also the potentially more contagious UK variant, B.1.1.7., On the horizon. Los Angeles Public Health officials confirmed the first case of this strain in the area over the weekend.
While Saturday may mark the strain’s first identified appearance in Los Angeles County, health officials said in the past few weeks that it was most likely already circulating in LAB1.1.7 had already traveled through San Diego and San Bernardino counties. Before that, the strain had been found in Colorado, where it reached the United States.
The CDC warned that the presence of B.1.1.7 may mark a new phase of “exponential growth” in the total of Covid-19 cases.
“Experts’ current projections predict that, if left unchecked, this variant may dominate locally in March,” said Los Angeles director of public health, Barbara Ferrer, on Friday.
We can now add to that the threat of a potentially vaccine-resistant strain, L452R, as well.
As a result, LA county officials have been discussing the possibility of further restrictions for the county tired of the closure.