CA Coronavirus 'Variants Of Concern': What To Know

CALIFORNIA — California continues to wrestle with a vaccine shortage as eligibility expands, and now the state finds itself in a race against the ever-mutating coronavirus.

Experts until recently weren't able to offer much advice about two variants first detected in California, but earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention designated two West Coast strains — B.1.427 and B.1.429 — as "variants of concern."

The two variants are about 20 percent more transmissible and were also found to significantly reduce the efficacy of some antibody treatments, the CDC said.

The West Coast variants were first discovered during California's devastating winter surge. The two variants accounted for more than 52 percent of cases in California, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a news briefing earlier this week.

The homegrown mutants have spread to other states and around the world, accounting for an estimated 41 percent of cases in Nevada and 25 percent of cases in Arizona.

The variant first detected in the United Kingdom — another "variant of concern" — was on track to become the dominant strain in the U.S., scientists said months ago. In some areas, the variants first discovered in the U.K. and those first seen on the West Coast are running neck and neck.

Together, the variants accounted for 63 percent of the specimens tested in Los Angeles County in one week, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said last week.

There were 2,830 cases of B.1.427 and 5,970 cases of B.1.429 in California as of March 24, according to the state.

The mere mention of the numbered mutants is enough to induce panic, but health officials assured the public that it's normal for viruses to mutate. Still, experts expressed concern about the variants' transmissibility and interactions with vaccines.

"Our most important intervention goal is to vaccinate our population," a spokesperson for the state's health agency said, speaking to Patch on condition of anonymity. "Meanwhile, we cannot let our guard down."

Dr. Charles Chiu, a virologist at the University of California, San Francisco, warned that B.1.427 and B.1.429 will account for 90 percent of the state's cases by the end of March. "The devil is already here," he told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month.

Chiu did not respond to Patch's request for comment.

The two variants produced twice as many viral particles inside a person's body, likely accounting for its virulence and transmissibility, according to Chiu's research.

"I wish I had better news to give you — that this variant is not significant at all," Chiu told The New York Times. "But unfortunately, we just follow the science."

Should Californians be concerned? Yes and no.

Much of the research into the variants is preliminary, but cases still appear to be dropping in California, even though the variants are more contagious.

Scientsts also assured that the available vaccines provide some level of protection against the mutations. "Even if a virus has one or more mutations in the spike protein, vaccines and natural infection would still be expected to provide valuable protection," state officials said on California's Department of Public Health website.

The B.1.351 variant, first detected in South Africa, was found to diminish the effectiveness of some vaccines, according to multiple reports.

"The immunity we have will not be as effective," Dr. John Swartzberg, a professor of vaccinology and infectious disease at the University of California, Berkeley, told Patch last month. "We don't know how much less effective it's going to be, but it's not going to be as effective as it's going to be against either [the U.K. variant] or the dominant strain here in the United States. But [vaccines] do appear to be effective in preventing people from dying. So it's just a further argument to get vaccinated."

As of last week, just four cases of that variant had been detected in the Golden State.

Little is known about the interaction between the West Coast variants and vaccines. Health department officials are working with the University of California "to assess different scenarios related to the spread of variants," the department told Patch Tuesday.

Getting most of the U.S. population vaccinated quickly will help slow the emergence of variants, experts have said. This is because a virus produces billions of copies within an infected person, and all it takes for a mutant to emerge is a copy that reproduces abnormally.

"Anytime viruses replicate, they mutate. They're very inaccurate replicators," Dr. Kimberly Shriner, an infectious disease specialist at Huntington Hospital, told Patch earlier this month.

"If you're vaccinated, that's not going to happen, which means that not only does the vaccine protect you, but it protects against a virus generating new mutants that could be more dangerous for everybody else," Swartzberg said.

The state as of Tuesday had administered at least one vaccine dose to more than 17 million Californians out of nearly 40 million people living in the state.

"We have to recruit the whole planet," Shriner said. "Each tiny step forward, I think, we have a chance of getting this thing under better control. But it's going to be a really daunting task."

California Coronavirus Data As Of Tuesday

• 3,566,464 confirmed cases to date. Numbers may not represent true day-over-day change as reporting of test results can be delayed.

• 1,996 new cases reported Monday.

• 1.6 percent is the seven-day positivity rate.

• 53,684,932 tests have been conducted in California. This represents an increase of 174,999 during the prior 24-hour reporting period.

• 57,788 COVID-19 deaths have been recorded since the start of the pandemic.

• 17,649,015 vaccine doses have been administered statewide.

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