Last week, there was a lot of good news for virus-infested California. The graph representing the number of new cases in the state looks like a downward stair, from 42,655 on Thursday to 30,699 on Saturday to 22,403 on Wednesday. It is a drop of almost 50% in less than a week.
The state’s director of public health, Dr. Mark Ghaly, pointed out that “ray of light” on Tuesday. “For the first time in a while, we have reduced numbers,” he said, before warning residents not to let their guard down. This warning may end up being justified.
On Wednesday, the state recorded the second highest total Covid-19 deaths of all time, 694. This metric remained stubbornly high, despite the general decline in cases, hospitalizations and use of virus-related ICUs. Deaths are, however, an indicator of delay and even that number may soon start to fall.
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A major concern may be virus variants that may increase numbers again, even as the state advances. Chief among them are the new strains of the virus that were recently discovered in the state.
Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Department of Public Health announced that the so-called British variant of Covid-19, known as B.1.1.7, had been identified in the region. B.1.1.7 is considered up to 50% more transmissible than the most widespread form of the virus. The number of Los Angeles residents infected with the UK variant was still small.
Then, on Monday, the California Department of Public Health revealed that another lesser-known strain was also circulating in the county.
Called CAL.20C, the variant appears to have appeared in the state in July, but it only began to spread significantly in November.
According to the New York Times, CAL.20C was found in more than half of California test samples analyzed genomically in mid-January. The number of these samples analyzed, it should be noted, is much smaller than the total number of daily Covid-19 tests in the state.
But Eric Vail, the director of molecular pathology at Cedars-Sinai, told the Times that CAL.20C may have played a role in the increase in cases that overwhelmed Southern California hospitals earlier this month. “I am quite confident that this is a more infectious strain of the virus,” said Dr. Vail.
Originally, the researchers identified a mutation in the standard virus strain they called L452R. Dr. Vail and others soon realized that the samples they were seeing that carried the L452R mutation also consistently carried four other mutations. Thinking that this was a unique variant, they identified any sample with all five mutations as CAL.20C.
Dr. Charles Chiu, a virologist and professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF who, in conjunction with state officials, has been genetically sequencing California test samples to identify new variants, said on Sunday that the first indications are that the L452R may be less susceptible to the current approved vaccines, but much more research is needed.
Asked if he was concerned about this possibility, Dr. Ghaly said, “Certainly,” but noted that it is still too early to make statements with any certainty.