Outbreaks of COVID variants in Santa Clara County, including Kaiser San Jose
The California Department of Public Health is seeing an increasing number of a new variant of Covid-19 across the state, including in the bay area. It is different from the strain detected in the UK. The new variant has been linked to several major outbreaks in Santa Clara County, including one in Kaiser, San Jose. Azenith Smith reports
SAN JOSE, California. – The California Department of Public Health is seeing an increasing number of a new variant of Covid-19 across the state, including the bay area. It is different from the strain detected in the UK. The new variant has been linked to several major outbreaks in Santa Clara County, including one in Kaiser, San Jose.
Health officials want to emphasize that they are studying the L452R variant in partnership with the CDC and the State Department of Health, since little is known. The main questions: How easily is it transmitted and will the vaccine be effective?
“Tonight we collaborated with UC San Francisco and Santa Clara to inform you that there is again an L452R variant,” said Dr. Erica Pan, an epidemiologist with the California Department of Public Health.
San Jose Kaiser at the heart of the coronavirus outbreak on Christmas Day among California’s top COVID violators
San Leandro Kaiser struck with new fines; KP comprises 10% of California’s COVID quotes
The patient contradicts Kaiser’s claim that everyone was notified of the COVID outbreak at Christmas
Official calculation of Kaiser San Jose Christmas coronavirus outbreak reaches almost 100 cases
Local and state health officials on Sunday announced a new variant of COVID-19. It was first detected in Denmark last March and in Alameda County in November, but it was very rare.
It is now being found at increasing rates in several California counties, including San Francisco and Santa Clara.
“We had a series of major outbreaks and that variant was identified in those outbreaks,” said Santa Clara County public health officer, Dr. Cody, on Sunday.
Cody said one of those outbreaks was in Kaiser, San Jose, which left more than 70 employees sick, 15 infected patients and one person died.
Cody said the health department is still trying to determine the variant’s role in this outbreak.
“Whether these outbreaks are behaving because of the virus or some other condition, we don’t know,” said Cody. “This is a very important signal for us that we have to lean over and do a lot more investigations.”
Cody said that so far there is no indication that the variant is associated with an increased severity of the disease.
Dr. Charles Chiu, from UCSF, conducts genomic sequencing, essentially collecting fingerprints for variations of the virus.
His latest findings are that the new variant has gone from almost 4% of cases to 25% in less than a month.
“That is why it is worrying that we have a variant that was actually quite unusual before the beginning of December, as it is about 25% of all cases that we are sequencing,” said Chiu.
It is not known how infectious this variant is and where it is located in a critical region of the virus can affect its effectiveness for the vaccine.
“With all the mutations in that particular region, there is concern that there will be or will be an effect on the vaccine,” said Chiu.