West Coast Covid-19 variant is now the dominant strain in California – Deadline

Last Wednesday, when California Governor Gavin Newsom gave one of his regular Covid-19 updates, he expressed surprise at “something that many people are not paying attention to”. This “something” is the growth of the so-called West Coast variant of Covid-19.

Newsom and its replacements have, to their credit, regular updates on the variant’s growth. Deadline reported that CA’s Director of Health and Human Services, Dr. Mark Ghaly, reported in early February that the state had discovered 1,000 instances of the West Coast variant, which are actually two similar variants referred to as B.1.427 / B .1,429 or CAL2.0C.

The following week, Newsom reported that the number of B.1.427 / B.1.429 cases identified increased by 20% to 1,200. Last week, when he was surprised by the lack of coverage, the governor noticed another 50% jump, to 1,834 cases. But those numbers were only a fraction of the real numbers. Genomic testing is necessary to identify new sample variants and is expensive.

In early January, the state administered more than 30 million Covid-19 tests. Of those tens of millions, only about 7,000 have been genomically analyzed, according to the San Jose Mercury News. Los Angeles County, for its part, is genomically analyzing only a few dozen test specimens a day.

According to Dr. Charles Chiu, virologist and professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF, author of a new study analyzed by the Los Angeles Times, CAL2.0C has increased to account for more than half of the cases in the state and may be the source of 90% of the state’s cases by the end of March.

What’s worse, Chiu told the New York Times on Tuesday that infections in the variant produce a viral load twice that of other variants. CAL2.0C also seems more astute at evading the immune system. As a result, said Chiu, cases caused by the variant are doubling every 18 days.

Although the most contagious variant of the virus in the UK is also spreading in the state, it appears to be spreading more slowly. But the two variants can merge.

From LAT:

The UK and California variants are equipped with improved capabilities, and the likelihood that they can circulate in the same population increases the spectrum of a return to increased infections and deaths, said Chiu. It also opens the door to a “nightmare scenario”: that the two viruses will meet in a single person, exchange their mutations and create an even more dangerous strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Eric Vail, director of molecular pathology at Cedars-Sinai, told The New York Times in early February that CAL.20C may have contributed to 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.

“At least 50% of our samples showed the West Coast variant,” said LA County public health director Barbara Ferrer last week, before guaranteeing that “more research needs to be done.”

This research can confirm what a small sample seems to indicate: the West Coast variant may not only be more transmissible, but more virulent.

Dr. Chiu studied the medical history of 324 people hospitalized at UCSF and found that those infected with CAL2.0C were more likely to have been admitted to the ICU and 11 times more likely to die.

This is, again, a very small sample and requires more research. But, if nothing else, Chiu’s research indications call for vastly increased geonomic testing of Covid-19 sames and more caution as the state proceeds to reopen.