aHealth officials in the United States have infected a second and possibly a third person with a new, more transmissible strain of the SARS-Cavi-2 virus, infectious disease experts once again feel the spirit of DJ Woo.
A little over a year ago, the initial response to the coronavirus crisis stalled due to the inability to detect the virus and measure the parameters to control its spread. Now, once again, it is not clear whether the new strain, which has previously surfaced in the UK, will affect the U.S. May be in, a potential case has been found in Colorado and a case has been uncovered in California. But it is possible that the spread of the variable has not stopped there.
“It simply came to our notice then. It looks like a sack that encloses with a drawstring. 19 or so when we had our first case in the Seattle area and six weeks later, when all of a sudden, it looks like we’ve had a community transition in California and Seattle and who knows where else, “said Michael Warrobe, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. “It makes sense.”
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Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute, told STAT that he did not believe in the new type, called B.1.1.7, which is still widespread. U.S. The December cases contained 250 genetic sequences of the SARS-2 virus that were logged into an international virus-sharing database known as GISAID; Not B.1.1.7 among them, Bedford said. But he believes it could be a matter of time.
“How I conceived this work … it’s very similar to January, February,” he said. “There are seed-giving events that have happened all over the country. Some have taken, some have not taken.… And you can imagine that it should be in places like New York and Boston with good travel connections from London, but by chance it could reach a few other places. “
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Warobe agreed that the new variant is probably already spreading in many parts of the country, it is traveling under the radar as the U.S. Not doing enough sequencing of the SARS-2 virus.
Compared to Europe, “we are a little behind eight balls in terms of our genomic sequence, both in terms of absolute numbers and compared to the UK, both in terms of the delay between sampling and getting sequences there.” He warned that if the U.S. If the case does not find and spread slowly it will probably see the kind of rapid spread that has been seen in the UK.
The new variant brings an unusual number of changes to the game, including some that change the behavior of the virus. It seems significantly more transmissible, the rate at which infected people infect others.
To date there is no evidence that the variable causes more severe disease. But hospitals are struggling to handle like coward patients; Further infections can increase mortality due to a decrease in the quality of care.
Nahid Bhadelia, medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit at Boston Medical Center, said, “Case mortality increases if health care systems are overflowing.” “That’s how it works.”
Many attempts are being made to find out how widespread the new variant is – one of which is powered by Wurobe’s laboratory. His team is trying to develop a giant that can be used to test a variety of viruses in the wastewater of a community sewer system. If the test works, he said, the lab will send test materials to other laboratories, test the samples in their own lab, or share a recipe for making primers and probes for widespread use of the test.
“I think waiting for a weird lab like Colorado would be the best way to filter the dirty water too close to get a better handle than coming to an individual patient sample,” Verube said.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also stepping up efforts to increase the SARS-2 virus sequence, officials said Wednesday.
Gregory Armstrong, who is leading the CDC team’s monitoring of virus types, said the national SARS-CoV-2 strain surveillance system, launched in November, would be able to handle 750 samples submitted by states each week for sequencing and study. . The CDC is also working with national reference laboratories in the country, often financing the indexing of many viruses. Hope is about 3,500 a week, Armstrong noted.
He said that experts from CDC and elsewhere do not believe that B.1..7. The mutations contained in will significantly weaken the protection produced by the covid vaccine in use or in production. “It simply came to our notice then. But keep in mind that it is possible that the amount of immunity induced by a natural infection or vaccination is so small that a slight decrease [antibody] There could be no significant impact on Titer, “said Armstrong.
But Bedford said the additional use of the vaccine would put additional pressure on the SARS-2 virus to mutate to avoid vaccine triggers.
“It’s one more argument that she’s trying to get the flock’s immune system up quickly and move the transmission forward through vaccination.” “The sooner we can vaccinate enough people, the sooner we can stop this diversity and other future mutants from spreading.”
