An easier-to-spread variant of Covid-19 detected in the U.S. for the first time last week could intensify the virus’s surge, if it hasn’t already, boosting the urgency for a speedier, more effective vaccine push.
Only three states — Colorado, California and Florida — have identified cases of the mutated strain that’s been raging in the U.K. for months. But U.S. health officials say they don’t yet know how far the variant may already have traveled in the U.S., or what it could mean for the future.
“I suspect it’s more widespread than we know,” said Michelle Barron, senior medical director of infection prevention and control at UCHealth, a health-care system with a dozen hospitals and hundreds of clinics in Colorado. “It’s a function of ‘if you look for it, you will find it.’”
The discovery of the mutant strain in the U.S. comes as the drive to vaccinate most Americans has been hampered by ineffective coordination and a lack of federal support for states and health-care systems. While more than 4.28 million Americans had been vaccinated as of Saturday evening, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker, that’s far fewer than the 20 million doses U.S. health officials predicted for the end of 2020.
Meanwhile, the number of infections is surging, with almost 231,000 new cases reported in the U.S. on Thursday before the holiday weekend, when reporting can be sporadic. Four states — including New York and California — have surpassed 1 million infections overall, and more than 350,000 Americans have died.
“It is a race, and this variant has made the whole challenge more formidable,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California. “Whatever we saw in 2020 in terms of a challenging virus, it’s going to be taken to a new level.”
Distributing vaccines has been a challenge for a U.S. health system strained by a concurrent surge in infections. State and local governments are struggling with complex logistics to keep the shots cold, deciding who should get early access, and persuading vaccine skeptics.
To boost the amount of vaccine available, the U.S. government is considering cutting by half the dose of the Moderna Inc. shot given to those 18 to 55, said Moncef Slaoui, Operation Warp Speed’s chief scientific officer, on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He said there is evidence showing the half-dose provides the same level of protection for that age group.
Slaoui’s comments came in response to a question about the U.K’s decision to get as many people as possible their first dose of a vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, while possibly delaying a second dose. He said such a shift would be a mistake for the U.S. since it wasn’t supported by trial data.
CDC Studies
Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently attempting to model what effect the variant could have on accelerating spread, according to Kristen Nordlund, an agency spokeswoman. At this time, though, “we do not have results,” Nordlund said in an email.
Prior to November, only a select number of U.S. cases had been sequenced, a laboratory procedure that can determine the genetic makeup of the pathogen as it travels through the population. Since then, however, the CDC has launched a national program to detect novel strains, said Greg Armstrong, director of the CDC’s advanced molecular detection program.
The CDC is now scaling up to sequence 750 samples on its own each week, according to Armstrong, and the agency is partnering with labs around the country to map the genetic material of about 1,750 virus samples weekly.
The agency is also exploring whether the mutations could make existing treatments less effective, according to Henry Walke, the CDC’s Covid-19 incident manager. Still, there’s no reason that measures like wearing a mask and social distancing would be less effective in preventing transmission of the new strain, he said during a call with reporters last week.
Mutating Viruses
Viruses have the opportunity to change through mutations that arise naturally as they replicate and circulate in their hosts. Some, like influenza, evolve quickly with thousands of mutations and distinct lineages, while others are more stable.
The new variant, known scientifically as B.1.1.7, contains a huge number of mutations, which is unusual, said Andy Pekosz, director of the Center for Emerging Viruses and Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University. A particular concern is the change in the spike protein, which binds to human cells, allowing the virus to gain entry.