Contagious New Variant Of COVID-19 Found In Southern California

LOS ANGELES, CA — A highly contagious variant of COVID-19 has been detected in Southern California, Gov. Gavin announced Wednesday.

The discovery was widely expected. Shortly after health officials in the United Kingdom disclosed the existence of a highly infectious strain of the coronavirus, the Los Angeles Department of Public Health began conducting genetic sequencing on dozens of virus samples to ferret out the new strain. Newsom did not say where in Southern California the variant was detected.

The variant, which is no more dangerous than the original virus but is much more easily transmitted from person to person, was first found in the United States Tuesday in Colorado. Officials in the U.K. claimed, without verification, that the new variant is as much as 53 to 70 percent more contagious than the original virus that originated in China, prompting new shutdowns in London. Both vaccines approved for usage in the United States are believed to be effective in protecting against the multiple variants of the coronavirus. Ongoing tests are being conducted in England to determine antibody and vaccine efficacy in protecting against the new variant.

Newsom made the disclosure during an online conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He did not offer any other details and did not specify exactly where the variant, known as B.1.1.7, was detected. It remains to be seen how widespread the new variant already is in the community. Health officials have reason to believe it is not yet the dominant strain circulating in the community because it did not show up in a majority of the genetic sequencing tests run this week.

Fauci said he was not surprised to hear the variant was found, saying, "we likely will be seeing reports from other states."

"I don't think Californians should feel this is something odd," Fauci said. "This is something expected."

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Early this month, new cases of the coronavirus began surging across Southern California at unexpected rates. Thanksgiving gatherings have largely been blamed for the surge, but officials also began to suspect the presence of the more contagious variant in the community.

Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Monday local health officials had tested a limited number of samples from COVID- positive patients and had not yet detected the variant.

"That doesn't mean it's not here," Ferrer said at the time. "It just means it didn't show up in the first round of testing.

"... For all of us in public health, because there is so much spread right now and so many people who are infected — and we're not running all of the samples through this sort of gene sequencing — it would be impossible for us to say with all certainty that the variant isn't here," she said. "And almost all of us, I think, agree that there's a high probability that the variant is here, although at this point it doesn't appear to be dominant, because if it was you might see it initially in the samples that are being run.

But Ferrer said even if the variant is in the county, it wouldn't change the infection-control measures that are already in place.

"I think whether the variant is here or it isn't here, the steps we need to take are exactly the same," she said. "Whether the variant is slightly more infectious than the virus as we're experiencing it now in the predominant strain we're seeing here in L.A. County, the steps to take are the same. And the urgency is the same."

"There is a lot of community spread, and that makes it easier for this virus to keep spreading," Ferrer said. "So we're all going to have to do everything we know how to do to contain the virus."

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.