California health officials are investigating whether a homemade coronavirus strain could be partly to blame for the state’s growing infections.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the scientists came across the new strain while looking for signs of the highly contagious variant that appeared in the United Kingdom before heading to the United States.
During this search, researchers found a new strain, called B.1.426, which is thought to be responsible for the rapid growth of infections during the California holiday season, where more than 3.1 million cases have been reported and 36,790 people died.
The new strain is also highly contagious and spreads faster than any other California variant.
“Although strain B.1.1.7 may play an important role in raising COVID rates in the UK and Europe, there are still no reports explaining the current increase in cases in Los Angeles and California as a whole, which began earlier this month. November 2020, ”researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center wrote in their findings.
California health officials are investigating whether a strain of homemade coronavirus, nicknamed B.1.426, could be partly to blame for the state’s growing infections. The strain has five mutations, including CAL.20C (red bubbles), which has been found more and more in California
According to the researchers, the CAL.20C strain was barely detectable in October, but by December it accounted for 24% of 4,500 viral samples.
The graph describes the rapid increase in infections between the end of November and December in California. The increase is attributed to what researchers believe is a home strain of coronavirus
In California, more than 3.1 million cases have been reported and 36,790 people have died. More than 18,000 people have died in the state in less than three months
“We report the existence of a new CAL.20C strain that is currently growing in numbers in Southern California,” they added.
Strain B.1.426 was initially discovered in July, but was not seen until three months later.
According to research, the CAL.20C strain was barely detectable in October, but by December it accounted for 24% of 4,500 viral samples.
In a separate study, researchers found that 25% of viral samples in northern California between the end of November and December were of the same type, according to the LA Times.
“There is a house variant under our noses,” Dr. Charles Chiu, a specialist in laboratory medicine at UC San Francisco, told the newspaper.
Chiu said that if he had not looked for the strain in the UK, “he could have missed this at every level”.
According to the Cedars-Sinai team, strain B.1.426 has five mutations, including the L452R mutation, which modifies the virus’s spike protein. Spike protein is what the virus uses to infiltrate human cells.
The new strain is believed to be partly responsible for California nearly doubling its death toll in less than three months.
However, how important the new growing strain played is still unclear due to the presence of other factors, including holiday gatherings and people who do not follow the CDC guidelines.
To determine the growing role of B.1.426, investigators are trying to figure out what he is capable of doing.
In a separate study, researchers found that 25 percent of viral samples in northern California between the end of November and December were of the same type. A doctor is checking a patient with COVID-19 in Los Angeles
The researchers told the LA Times that they will focus on its transmissibility and its ability to bypass masks, drugs and vaccines, which are used as tools to stop the spread.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is stepping up efforts to monitor coronavirus mutations to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines and treatments remain ahead of new variants of the disease until collective immunity is reached, the CDC chief said Sunday.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky spoke about the implications of the rapidly evolving virus during a Sunday interview with Fox News
More than 25 million Americans have been infected with the virus and there have been more than 418,000 deaths in just over a year after the first US case of COVID-19 was documented.
Walensky, who took over as director of the CDC last Wednesday, the day President Joe Biden was sworn in, also said the immediate biggest culprit for the slow distribution of the vaccine is a supply crisis exacerbated by inventory confusion inherited from to the Trump administration.
“The fact that we do not know today, five days after this administration and a few weeks after planning, how much vaccine we have only gives you a perspective on the challenges we are left with,” she told Fox News Sunday.
Biden’s transition team was largely excluded from government deliberations to launch the vaccine for weeks after his election, as then-President Donald Trump refused to grant defeat and allow the incoming administration access to the necessary information. preparation for governance.
There have been more than 25 million cases of the virus reported in the United States since the pandemic began last year
Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, said in a separate interview with NBC Meet the Press that a plan to distribute the vaccine, especially beyond nursing homes and hospitals, “did not really exist when we entered White House”.
Walensky said he was confident the government would soon address supply issues and continue to dramatically expand vaccine production and distribution until the end of March.
However, uncertainty about the immediate supply will hamper local and state efforts to plan in advance the number of vaccination sites, staff and appointments to be determined in the meantime, exacerbating short-term shortages, she said.
Vaccination has become increasingly critical with the recent emergence of several coronavirus variants that are thought to be more transmissible and, in the case of a strain first detected in the UK, perhaps more lethal.
“We are now expanding both our oversight and our study,” Walensky said, adding that the CDC is working with the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and even the Pentagon.
The goal, she said, is to monitor “the impact of these variants on vaccines as well as our therapy,” as the virus continues to move as it spreads.
As long as vaccines can provide immunity to the “herd” in the population, wearing a mask and social distancing remain vital to “reducing the amount of virus circulating and therefore reducing the amount of variants that exist,” Walensky said.
Although British officials warned on Friday that the so-called variant of the coronavirus in Britain, already detected in at least 20 US states, was associated with a higher level of mortality, scientists said that existing vaccines still appear to be effective against it.
It is concerned, however, that a more contagious variant in South Africa may reduce the effectiveness of current vaccines and is resistant to three antibody therapies developed to treat patients with COVID-19.
The similarities between the South African variant and another identified in Brazil suggest that the Brazilian variety may also resist antibody treatment.
“We are in a race against these variants,” Videnk Murthy, who was nominated by Biden to become the next US surgeon general, said on Sunday on ABC’s This Week.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist, said in late December that he was optimistic that the United States could gain enough collective immunity from COVID to regain “an appearance of normalcy” by the fall of 2021.
But Murthy said getting the herd’s immunity before the start of a new school year in September was “an ambitious goal.”
However, Murthy suggested that the government could exceed Biden’s goal of administering 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days of the presidency, telling ABC News, “this is one floor; it is not a ceiling ‘.
Fauci, who appears separately on CBS News, said the target of 100 million shots includes people who could have received both injections of two-dose vaccines and those who received only the first shot.