The South African COVID-19 variant has been found in a resident of Nassau County, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said Sunday, in the first confirmed case of the variant contracted by someone living in New York.
Sequencing performed on a sample of the individual done in a New York City lab and confirmed in the state’s Wadsworth Center lab showed it contained the South African variant, Cuomo said in a press release.
The person lives in Glen Head, said Jordan Carmon, a spokesman for Laura Curran, the executive director of Nassau County.
Scientists and health officials believe that the South African and UK variants of COVID-19 appear to be spreading faster than the current dominant species, but more research is needed to determine whether they are more lethal or less responsive to current vaccines.
According to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center, there have been more than 28 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the US since the pandemic started a year ago.
The nation was about to hit the stark milestone of 500,000 dead as of Sunday afternoon. But the state’s announcement of the first case of the South African species came when the rate of COVID-19 positive cases in New York fell below 3% for the first time since Nov. 23.
The South African variant was first identified in the United States in South Carolina late last month. A Connecticut resident who was hospitalized in New York City was also found to have the variant last week, Cuomo said.
Last Saturday, 136 cases of the British variant of COVID-19 had been discovered in the state, including 10 in Nassau County and 12 in Suffolk County.
It’s likely that the Glen Head resident who tested positive for the South African variety is not the only Long Islander with that species, experts said.
“We don’t really have a lot of clarity about the number of cases of these variants in our area yet,” said Dr. David Hirschwerk, an infectious disease expert and interim chair of medicine at Zucker School of Medicine in Hofstra / Northwell in Hempstead. “As of now, a small proportion of positive tests will undergo genetic sequencing. Those kinds of tests will steadily increase.”
Complex genomic sequence tests help researchers detect COVID-19 variants. Last week, The Associated Press reported that White House officials said there were not enough laboratories in the countries processing samples for COVID-19 genomic sequencing and pledged nearly $ 200 million to expand this to about 25,000 samples per week. That’s about three times the current level.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, scientists in the UK said that variant “may be associated with an increased risk of death compared to other variants,” but more studies are needed to confirm this finding.
The CDC said both the British and South African varieties seem to spread more easily and more quickly than other varieties. They still don’t know how widely they have spread and how they might affect vaccines, tests and COVID-19 therapies.
“(The South African strain) is probably one that spreads more easily, but just how much more and whether it’s more virulent – that information is really pending,” said Hirschwerk.
While there is uncertainty about how effective the available COVID-19 vaccines are against variants, Hirschwerk urged people to get vaccinated when they qualify. At the very least, vaccinations would reduce the chances of getting a serious form of the disease, even if infected with a variant, he said.
“There remains a tremendous benefit to getting the vaccines, not just because of this [South African] strain is probably still a small fraction of the strains we see, but the vaccine has a strong advantage over the UK strain as well as the standard strain, ”he said.
The state registered 6,610 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, including 546 in Nassau County and 513 in Suffolk County. Based on 221,157 test results, the daily positivity rate was 2.99%. According to state statistics, it stayed higher on Long Island at 4.2%.
The new figures showed a continuous decline in the number of new cases after a peak after the holiday period. On January 5, the state’s daily positivity rate was 8.4%
“We continue to see a reduction in positivity and hospital admissions across the state, which is good news, and these advances allow us to open the valve to our economy even further,” Cuomo said in a statement. But with the discovery of a case of the South African variant in the state, it is more important than ever for New Yorkers to stay vigilant, wear masks, wash hands and stay socially aloof. We are now in a race. – between our ability to vaccinate and these variants actively trying to multiply – and we’ll only win that race if we stay smart and disciplined. ”
The state registered an additional 75 deaths from COVID-19 on Saturday, including four in Nassau County and nine in Suffolk County.
In a statement, Curran said, “We do not believe the South African variety is more deadly, but it may be more contagious. The best response is to continue the tried and tested precautions: wear masks, avoid social gatherings, distance yourself, stay at home. and get tested if they are sick. ”
Suffolk officials could not be reached for comment on the presence of the South African variant in Nassau.
Efforts to vaccinate more than 10 million eligible New Yorkers against COVID-19 were impacted by winter storms delaying federal shipments, the state said. More than 2.2 million people in the state have received their first dose of the vaccine and more than 1.1 million have received a second dose, state statistics showed.
To date, a total of 416,577 first and second doses have been administered on Long Island.
With Jesse Coburn
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The South African variant
- Originally discovered in October 2020.
- In January, South Carolina reported the first US case.
- So far, 22 cases of this variant have been detected in the US in 10 states
- The CDC does not know how widely this variant has spread.
- The variants from South Africa, the UK and Brazil are believed to spread more easily and faster than other variants.
- It is also not yet clear how this variant affects existing COVID-19 therapies, vaccines and tests.
- No current evidence that infections from the variant cause more serious illness.
Source: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Lisa joined Newsday in 2019 as a staff writer. She previously worked at amNewYork, the New York Daily News and the Asbury Park Press on politics, government and general assignments.