The new potentially more contagious coronavirus strain that has caused concern in Europe has been detected in the Big Bear, bringing the total number of such cases in California to at least six, officials said Friday.
The variant was found in two members of the same household who were tested for the virus on December 20, the San Bernardino County Public Health Department said in a press release. One of them had contact with a traveler who returned from the UK on December 11 and began having COVID-19 symptoms three days later, officials said.
An investigation was still underway to determine whether the traveler, also a resident of the Big Bear area, had the variant or infected others, county officials said on Saturday. Four other cases were identified this week in San Diego County.
The United States now requires travelers to provide proof of a negative coronavirus test before flying out of the UK, but the rule did not take effect until Monday.
This came after news of the strain, known as B.1.1.7, was announced in England before Christmas and then confirmed in the US for the first time on Tuesday in Colorado. Florida also reported a case.
Experts say there is no evidence that the variant is more deadly, causes more severe diseases or makes existing vaccines ineffective.
However, a distinct set of genetic changes appears to make the virus easier to transmit from person to person and to improve its ability to sneak past the immune system, causing fears that it could cause new cases to grow and faster, as a vague slow release struggles to begin and many hospitals are already overwhelmed by patients with COVID-19.
“Based on the information currently available, we know that the strain of variant B.1.1.7 appears to be spreading easier and faster,” Dr. Michael Sequeira, San Bernardino County Health Officer, said in a statement. “Therefore, following all safe practices is more important than ever.”
Scientists are not yet sure how widespread the variant is in the US, but there is evidence that it can already spread in some communities.
The first case in the United States, a 20-year-old Colorado national guard who had been sent to help a Simla nursing home cope with an outbreak, did not travel outside the country, officials said. A second member of the Guard was also suspected of having the option, according to authorities.
On Wednesday, officials announced that the variant was first identified in California, in a 30-year-old man from San Diego County, who also had no recent travel history. Tests were pending to determine if one of the man’s household contacts had the option after that person was hospitalized with COVID-19, officials said.
The next day, county public health officials said they believed the strain was widespread in the area: genome-wide sequencing had confirmed three more cases in men who had not had contact with each other.
The men – two 40-year-old and one 50-year-old – also had no interaction with the first confirmed case. Two of them had not traveled abroad; the third has not yet been fully interviewed, officials said.
In all, the four cases of the variant were detected in communities spread across San Diego County: La Mesa, Mission Beach, Otay Mesa and the Carmel Mountain area, suggesting it has already gained a foothold in the region, officials said.
“We believe that many other cases of strain B.1.1.7 will be confirmed in the coming days and weeks,” said Dr. Eric McDonald, a county public health official, in a statement.
Officials have not yet found evidence of the variant in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the state and the most affected by the virus. But that doesn’t mean it’s not circulating, warned public health director Barbara Ferrer.
“We have thousands and thousands of people being tested every day and we are able to take a small number of test results and do gene sequencing,” Ferrer said during a briefing earlier in the week.
Florida became the third state on Thursday to announce that it had identified the variant, to a 20-year-old man from Martin County who had not traveled recently.
Experts say that the development is not a surprise: viruses tend to move the more they reproduce. Most mutations have no effect on how a virus works, but sometimes they can change the way a virus behaves.
In that case, the changes could have made the virus up to 70% more communicable, fueling a rapid spread of new cases in London and southern England, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said last month, while announcing largely renewed blocking measures. of the country. The discovery led other countries to restrict or ban travel in the UK.
Some scientists, however, are skeptical that the genetic changes in the strain make it more contagious and say more studies are needed to determine whether other factors, such as population density, different masking rates and different adherence to rules of social distancing, could explain the rapid spread of the variant in England.
(Writers Melissa Healey, Rong-Gong Lin II, and Luke Money contributed to this report.)
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