A mutated and more contagious strain of the coronavirus that raised deep concern when it surfaced in the UK has arrived in California, Governor Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday.
San Diego County officials said tests showed that a 30-year-old resident contracted the strain in the variant’s first confirmed case in California, a day after the sequence was first discovered on U.S. soil in Colorado. The Southern California man had not traveled recently, officials said – a sign that despite efforts to contain the mutation in Europe, it may already be spreading locally.
Gavin Newsom announced the news during a virtual meeting with Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
There is no evidence that the mutated strain is causing more serious cases of the disease, Fauci and other infectious disease experts say, and the first evidence is that it could be controlled with the emerging line of vaccines.
But a more transmissible strain could lead to more infections and deaths, as the virus reaches those most vulnerable to it. And an increase in COVID-19 patients could exacerbate the pressure on an already burdened medical system, making it more likely that people will die of the virus if overwhelmed hospitals cannot provide the care patients need.
The precautions people should take to prevent the spread of the latest strain are the same ones officials have been recommending for months in the fight against the coronavirus – wearing a face cover and avoiding contact with people outside your household.
“If we keep doing those things – no matter how transmissible this virus is – it will be lost,” said John Swartzberg, professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at Berkeley Public Health. “Don’t change anything, just do what you always should.”
Fauci said that during a pandemic, mutations and new strains of the virus are to be expected.
“I’m not surprised you have a business and probably more business in California. We will likely see reports from other states, ”said Fauci. “I don’t think Californians should feel like this is anything strange.”
The coronavirus is an RNA virus, and such viruses “live on mutation,” Fauci said. Most mutations do not change how the virus works, but “occasionally you get a mutation that affects the function of the virus.”
“It appears,” said Fauci, “from what we’ve learned from the UK and what we’ll learn here, this mutation actually makes the virus better at passing from one person to another.”
Researchers aren’t yet sure why that is, Swartzberg said. A prime suspect is the “spike” proteins on the virus, which may have been mutated to bind more easily to the cells of a potential host. The mutation can also cause infected people to shed more of the virus.
The bottom line, says Swartzberg, is “that (infected) person is more likely to spread it to another person.”
Fauci said people already infected with the coronavirus also appear to have immunity to this strain. Scientists will evaluate the effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccine on the new strain, Fauci said, but a single mutation is unlikely to affect the effectiveness of a vaccine.
The new strain has not evaded detection in diagnostic tests. At the national level, however, the US has not developed a robust surgery to sequence viruses and check for genetic mutations. According to an analysis by the Washington Post, 42 other counties had detected more infections than the US, despite the overwhelming number of cases in the country.
The Associated Press contributed to reporting.