One person had recently returned from a domestic trip to a U.S. state with confirmed cases of the UK strain before he became ill, and the second person determined to have the variant was a close contact with the first individual, the health department said.
An additional case of the UK variant is suspect and is under investigation. That person also had close contact with the person who traveled to the country, said Kirby Kruger, director of disease control at the Department of Health.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the UK variant is more infectious than other strains of the virus. Other COVID-19 strains originate in Brazil and South Africa. Scientists estimate that the United Kingdom variant is 35% to 45% more transmissible than strains commonly found in the United States. Some experts say the UK variant is more deadly, but the CDC says more research is needed to confirm this finding.
Even though the variants are genetically different from one another and the strains commonly found in the United States, early studies show that COVID-19 vaccines administered across the country are effective against the variants, according to the CDC.
Determining whether a positive COVID-19 test is the result of a variant is a multi-step process for the North Dakota public health lab, said Kruger. The lab processes some of the state’s COVID-19 PCR tests (also called molecular tests, which are different from rapid antigen tests) and examines three “targets” of the virus for each test. If one of the targets appears abnormal, then the laboratory will further analyze the genome sequencing. Based on the sequencing, health authorities can determine whether the positive test for COVID-19 contains the same genetic makeup as the UK variant.
The two people who tested positive for the UK strain and the third suspected case were isolated. But when the laboratory was able to confirm that they were positive for the variant through genome sequencing, the three had passed 10 days of isolation and were no longer infectious, Kruger said.
The health department declined to provide more information about the three individuals, including age, sex or municipality of residence.
Kruger said the department does not want to give residents a “false sense of security” because both confirmed cases and one suspected case with the variant have been recovered. “There is certainly no guarantee that they are the only ones in North Dakota,” he said.
For tests that are sent out of state for processing, Kruger said that at least one of the labs sends information about the positive results back to North Dakota for further examination to see if there are any variants, but this is not the case. for all laboratories. That is why there are likely to be more variant cases in the state.
Some of the labs also do their own testing of variants, although Kruger says he “doesn’t know how far this is going”.
Additional strains, such as those originating in Brazil and South Africa, cannot be detected in the same way as the United Kingdom strain. The North Dakota lab performs random sample screening tests for them, examining 48 random positive tests each week for the strains, Kruger said. Last month, Minnesota confirmed the first case of the Brazilian variant in the country.
Kruger emphasized that people should continue to practice social detachment, the proper use of masks and good hygiene to prevent the spread of the virus.
As of Tuesday, there were 1,299 confirmed cases caused by variants of COVID-19 in the U.S., with at least 42 states reporting confirmed cases of the UK strain, according to the CDC.
Sanford Health now has the ability to test variants.
Identifying variants is generally not important in the treatment of COVID-19, said Dr. Avish Nagpal, who directs infection control at Sanford in Fargo. “It is more for research and epidemiological purposes,” he said.
Tracking coronavirus mutations is important to predict whether the pandemic will produce a spike or depression and therefore helps providers to prepare for what is to come, Nagpal said. “It’s a bit of a complicated test, so it’s not possible to do all the samples,” he said, noting that doctors don’t have different patient treatment options for the virus variants.
Vaccination, while proceeding at a gradual pace, is helping to stem the spread of the virus, Nagpal said. Across the state in North Dakota, 14.1% of residents received at least one dose of the vaccine, and active cases, which exceeded 10,000 at last year’s peak, have recently dropped below 800.
“I think the worst is over with this pandemic,” he said.
North Dakota reports 123 new cases
The state health department reported 123 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, including:
No new deaths were reported on Wednesday, but at least 1,431 North Dakota residents died from or with COVID-19 during the pandemic, according to the health department. Over 61% of deaths occurred in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
COVID-19 hospitalizations declined slightly on Wednesday for 43 residents, which is significantly less than the more than 350 North Dakotans who were hospitalized in November.
Active COVID-19 cases in North Dakota increased slightly on Tuesday to 797 residents known to be infected with the virus. This is the lowest number of active cases registered by the state since July.
About 2.2% of the 5,457 residents tested as part of the last batch received a positive result, and the average positive rate of those tested in the past two weeks is about 2.5%.
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Readers can contact reporter Michelle Griffith, a member of Report for America, at [email protected]. Reporter Patrick Springer contributed to this report.