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The SARS-CoV-2 variant first detected in the UK is rapidly becoming the dominant strain in several countries, doubling every 10 days in the US, according to new data.
The findings of Nicole L. Washington, PhD, associate director of research at the genomics company Helix, and her colleagues were posted Sunday on the prepress server. medRxiv. The article has not been peer-reviewed in a scientific journal.
The researchers also found that the transmission rate in the United States of the variant, labeled B.1.1.7, is between 30% and 40% higher than that of the more common lineages.
While the clinical results were initially thought to be similar to those of other SARS-CoV-2 variants, early reports suggest that infection with variant B.1.1.7 may increase the risk of death by approximately 30%.
A co-author of the current study, Kristian Andersen, said The New York Times , “Nothing in this document is surprising, but people need to see it.”
Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, added that “we should probably prepare for this to be the predominant lineage in most places in the United States in March.”
The B.1.1.7 variant study adds support to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) prediction last month that it would dominate in March.
“Our study shows that the US is on a similar trajectory to other countries where B.1.1.7 quickly became the dominant variant of SARS-CoV-2, requiring immediate and decisive action to minimize the COVID-19 morbidity and mortality, “write the researchers.
The authors note that variant B.1.1.7 became the dominant strain of SARS-CoV-2 in the UK within a few months of its detection.
“Since then, the variant has been increasingly observed in many European countries, including Portugal and Ireland, which, like the UK, saw devastating waves of COVID-19 after B.1.1.7 became dominant,” they write the authors.
Storm “Category 5”
Variant B.1.1.7 has likely been spreading between US states since at least December, they write.
Medscape Medical news reported on January 15 that as of January 13, variant B.1.1.7 had been seen in 76 cases in 12 US states, according to an advance CDC release. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
As of Sunday, there were 690 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant in the US in 33 states, according to the CDC.
Washington and his colleagues examined more than 500,000 coronavirus test samples from cases in the United States that have been tested at Helix’s San Mateo, California-based facility since July.
In the study, they found an inconsistent prevalence of the variant in all states. In the last week of January, researchers estimated the share of B.1.1.7 in the US population to be about 2.1% of all COVID-19 cases, although they found that it accounted for about 2% of all COVID-19 cases in California and approximately 4.5% of cases in Florida. The authors acknowledge that their data is less robust outside of those two states.
Although it seems a relatively low frequency, “our estimates show that its growth rate increases by at least 35% to 45% and doubles every week and a half,” the authors write.
“Because laboratories in the US are only sequencing a small subset of SARS-CoV-2 samples, the true sequence diversity of SARS-CoV-2 in this country is still unknown,” they note.
Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said last week that the United States is facing a “Category 5” storm with the spread of variant B.1.1. 7 too. such as the variants first identified in South Africa and Brazil.
“We’re going to see something that we haven’t seen in this country yet,” Osterholm said recently on NBC. Meet the press.
Lead author Nicole L. Washington and many of the co-authors are Helix employees. Other co-authors are Illumina employees. Three co-authors own shares in ILMN.
The work was funded by Illumina, Helix, the Innovative Genomics Institute (CYC), and the New Frontiers in Research Fund provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CYC).
Marcia Frellick is a freelance journalist living in Chicago. She has previously written for the Chicago Tribune, Science News, and Nurse.com and was an editor for the Chicago Sun-Times, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the St. Cloud (Minnesota) Times. Follow her on Twitter at @mfrellick
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