What does new COVID strain mean for state?
There’s a heightened concern that a new COVID-19 mutation — believed to spread faster than the original — could already be in the U.S.
But doctors say it’s likely not more dangerous or vaccine resistant than the original strain.
“There are thousands of variants of the SARS-CoV-2, none recognized to be more potent or contagious at this time,” said Keith Grant, senior system director of infection prevention at Hartford HealthCare.
“We in the science community will have so much to review over the next days or so, but this is indeed concerning (and) we will need to watch the development.”
The strain was first spotted in the United Kingdom, where most of the cases have been detected. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced this week that the variant could already be in the United States.
“Ongoing travel between the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the high prevalence of this variant among current U.K. infections, increase the likelihood of importation,” according to a CDC statement last updated on Tuesday. “Given the small fraction of U.S. infections that have been sequenced, the variant could already be in the United States without having been detected.”
Last week, U.K. health secretary Matt Hancock spoke to parliament about the new strain, which he said had been identified in more than 1,000 cases, mostly in the South of England. During his talk, Hancock reassured members of the legislative body that “there is currently nothing to suggest that this variant is more likely to cause serious disease and the latest clinical advice is that it’s highly unlikely that this mutation would fail to respond to a vaccine.”
However, he and other experts said there are major concerns about the new strain, including that it’s far more contagious than the one that first popped up in the United States during the spring. Grant said early data suggests the new strain is more than 70 percent more contagious.
Other experts echoed the idea that the new strain is more transmissible.
“It’s much more efficiently spread,” said Dr. Zane Saul, chief of infectious disease at Bridgeport Hospital. But he is still cautiously optimistic, as preliminary information shows the vaccine is still effective against this strain.
Given how contagious the new strain is likely to be “the vaccine couldn’t have come at a better time,” Saul said.
It is too early to tell how the new variant could affect the United States, said Dr. Luke Davis, an attending physician at Yale New Haven Hospital and an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health and the Yale School of Medicine.
“I think, really, the public health message is that the things to protect you from this virus are very similar to the
things that are protecting you from any other virus,” he said, referencing wearing a mask, social distancing and limiting prolonged interactions with others.
“Those are kind of the fundamental things that we know that work.”
Davis said he has a lot of questions about the new strain and how it spread.
“A very obvious one is that we don’t know, necessarily, what kinds of behaviors those individuals who got the strain may have engaged in,” he said.
“For example, it could be this strain took off because of a super spreader event that happened many months ago, maybe wasn’t recognized and, then, disseminated that virus around the U.K.”
Davis said it could also be the people who were diagnosed with this virus were more likely to get tested and identified.
“I think, right now, there’s just a number of factors that are really uncertain,” he said. “That thing that you hear scientists pointing to is that they’d love to see functional
studies if these mutations are associated with it being more likely that the virus would take hold in another person.”
Until more is known, Davis said it’s important to continue following the public health guidelines to help prevent the spread of the disease.
“A story like this just kind of reminds us how much we don’t know and how we need to be careful until people sort it out a little bit more,” he said. “Hopefully, until this thing is in the rear-view mirror.”