The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Lamont: 40% of COVID cases may contain highly contagious strain
Gov. Ned Lamont said more than a third of Connecticut’s new COVID infections likely involve the variant first identified in the United Kingdom that experts say is a highly contagious and potentially more dangerous strain of the disease.
“The B.1.1.7., aka the U.K. variant, which is highly-infectious, looks like it could be about 40 percent of our infections right now, maybe a little bit more in some of the states to the south of us,” Lamont said Thursday.
The news is not unexpected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said as early as January that the variant could become the predominant strain in the U.S. in March, suggesting Connecticut is actually behind that trajectory.
But the increased detection of the strain comes as Connecticut is seeing a bump in overall COVID cases and an elevated positivity rate.
“Considering that B.1.1.7 is moving toward the majority of the cases, it’s likely playing a bit of a role,” said Nathan Grubaugh, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health who is tracking strains of the virus in the state. “However, I'd point out that human behaviors are the main driving force in the trends, so this may be happening even without B.1.1.7.”
In the U.K., the variant caused the nation to begin a second lockdown in early January, after the rapidly-spreading variant led to rising hospitalizations.
In Connecticut, 379 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant have been identified, according to state data released Thursday. Many of them have been found in the New Haven area.
There have been 72 cases identified in New Haven, 30 in West Haven, 25 in Waterbury and 24 in Wallingford, the data shows.
Branford, Bridgeport, East Haven and Hamden have each identified more than a dozen cases of the variant, according to the data.
A study published this month in the health journal, Nature, estimated the variant makes the virus about 61 percent more deadly.
Sequencing of COVID-19 samples by Yale University and Jackson Labs last week found 38 percent were cases of the B.1.1.7. variant, according to data released on Thursday.
About 22 percent were cases of B.1.526, a variant first detected in New
York. Connecticut is not tracking the cumulative number of cases of the strain, according to Yale’s report. The strain from New York is considered to be a “variant of interest,” and not a “variant of concern” like B.1.1.7.
Lamont noted there is a “creep up” in cases among younger adults. “That’s where the infections are taking place, it’s a younger demographic — less complications, but perhaps a little less caution,” he said.
Josh Geballe, the state’s chief operating officer, said Connecticut’s partners are screening for the two variants first identified in California, known as B.1.427 and B.1.429. They have identified “a very small number” of each — two of the B.1.427 and seven of the B.1.429, he said.
The state’s report released Thursday showed Connecticut has now also recorded two cases of the P.1 variant first identified in Brazil and seven cases of the B.1.351 strain first identified in South Africa.
Grubaugh said people “should be aware that we have all of the major variants of concern, and these could be a problem if we let them be.”
“Variants can't spread if we don't have cases,” he added.