Santa Cruz Works hosts COVID-19 variant panel
SANTA CRUZ >> A group of panelists comprised of UC Santa Cruz professors and local health officials addressed community concerns over various COVID-19 strains that have become more prevalent across the county.
Recent strains of the virus have appeared in California, known as the B 1.1.7 strain. This strain of the virus is known to be more contagious than previous variants of COVID-19.
Santa Cruz Works hosted the virtual COVID-19 infosession titled “COVID-19 Mutations and You” Tuesday night via zoom in response to the increased awareness over different variants of the disease. The panel eased concerns over what that could mean as the pandemic approaches a full year in existence.
“Don’t panic. Just like we handled the flu, we can keep track of these things and we will keep track of these things,” said Scientific Director of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute David Haussler. “We are beginning to sequence all of the variants of the virus including all of the variants that are common in Santa Cruz and we will be able to recognize when dangerous change to the virus happen if indeed, they do happen.”
The coronavirus mutates by changing the spike protein attached to it, according to Haussler. It does this in order to find a more efficient way to penetrate the body’s defenses.
It’s common for viruses to mutate frequently as they continue to infect people. It’s simply how a virus survives, similar to how other species evolve and adapt to their environment. However, evolution isn’t an overnight process, so it took the virus nearly a year to evolve in a way that makes it more contagious.
“There are lots of variants that are emerging all the time. Theses variants will drift to higher and lower frequency depending on whether they make the virus more transmissible,” said Beth Shapiro, a professor of evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. “Just like mutations that arise in our own genomes, most of those mutations don’t do anything, so it took some time for us to start seeing the mutations that did change the transmission dynamics.”
While the new variant of COVID-19 is more infectious, which can seem like a scary thing at first, that mutation does come with trade-offs. As viruses continue to evolve, they tend to become less deadly, but more contagious.
“The virus has no interest in killing you. In fact, quite the opposite,” Haussler said. “It would rather keep you alive and have you spread it to more people. We often see that viruses do evolve to be milder but more transmissible.”
However, that doesn’t answer how the new variant came to be, only why. Dr. David Gilarducci, the deputy public health officer for the county, believes the key lies in how long the virus infects people.
When someone is less equipped to fight off the virus, it can infect them for longer and has more opportunities to mutate, Gilarducci said. As it mutates, it is able to find ways to “escape immunity,” which results in strains like the B 1.1.7 variant that spreads more easily.
The mutations of the virus also raised concerns over the efficacy of the vaccine moving forward. Community members expressed worries about the virus becoming immune to the vaccine.
While the virus may mutate to a point where the current vaccine will no longer work, that isn’t a problem virologists haven’t had in the past. It happens every year with the flu, which is why there is a new flu vaccine every year, Gilarducci said.
Haussler reassured listeners that adapting the vaccine wouldn’t be a problem.
“Let’s say the Moderna vaccine doesn’t work for the new strain. Then Moderna estimates that within a very short time they could produce a vaccine for the new strain,” he said. “I’ve hear as little as six weeks, which is incredible. We could never get a new vaccine that fast in the old days.”
Panelists noticed that a lot of questions seemed to be rooted around hesitancy over the vaccine, especially after recipients in San Diego experienced severe allergic reactions. They responded by urging people to take the vaccine when they get the opportunity.
“We’re in a situation right now that the risk of contracting COVID and having a serious illness far outweighs any risk associated with the (vaccine),” Gilarducci said. “An allergic reaction is simple to treat. We do have medical teams at the vaccination clinics that are prepared to deal with that. It’s reversible. It causes no long-term harm, and you get the benefit of some immunity from the virus which I think is super important.”