Homegrown Coronavirus Variant The Stuff Of 'Nightmares'

LOS ANGELES, CA — Ongoing studies of the West Coast variant of the coronavirus have health officials in Los Angeles on edge amid mounting evidence that the variant is more contagious and more virulent. The burning question at this point is: How effective will vaccines be against the variant now dominant in California?

Dr. Charles Chiu, a virologist at the University of California, San Francisco warned that B.1.427/B.1.429, the variant that has emerged in California, 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.

Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said the California variant is believed to have a wide presence already in Los Angeles County.

"We can confirm that between 40 and 50 percent of the samples that we sequenced in the public health lab since December contain what is known as the (California) mutation of interest," she said.

The variant played a role in the winter surge that claimed thousands of lives in Los Angeles. When researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center publicly identified the variant in January, it had infected about a third of the hospital's patients and a quarter of all Southlanders testing positive for coronavirus at the time. It was an early sign that the variant may be more likely to lead to severe cases.

According to Chiu and his team of researchers, the variant produces twice as many viral particles inside a person's body, likely accounting for its virulence and transmissibility. In lab experiments, it also appears to be more resistant to antibodies produced by the vaccine and prior infections, the Los Angeles Times reported. UCSF researchers said they fear it could potentially combine with the U.K. variant to take on an even more virulent form, calling it a "nightmare scenario”

“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.”

There is still much that is not fully understood about the new variant. For example, if the variant is more contagious and more resistant to antibodies, why have cases declined so dramatically in Los Angeles even as the new variant emerges as the dominant one? Authorities continue to study the new variant, and health officials point to it as reason to rapidly vaccinate the population before more dangerous mutations emerge.

Meanwhile, more cases of the COVID-19 variant first discovered in the United Kingdom have been detected in the county, raising the overall total to 18. The new cases include two that were confirmed as part of a four-case outbreak at USC, with the other two patients also suspected of having the U.K. variant but are awaiting lab confirmation.

"The individuals are doing well and they are in isolation," Ferrer said. "Close contacts have been identified, notified and they're quarantining."

She said no cases of a South African variant have yet been detected in the county.

Also on Feb. 24, the COVID-19 death toll in Los Angeles County spiked upward with a review of death certificates dating back to early December confirming 806 more fatalities that can be attributed to the virus, punctuating the deadly toll of the winter surge in cases.

As of Feb. 24, the county's death toll from COVID-19 stood at 20,997, with 136 new fatalities reported by the county, eight by Long Beach and two by Pasadena. But the death toll now includes another 806 deaths that occurred in the county as early as the beginning of December that have just been listed as COVID fatalities.

"The majority of these deaths occurred during the surge between Dec. 3, 2020, and Feb. 3, 2021," Ferrer said. "This was a period, as you all know, when very many deaths occurred across the county and not all of them were reported to Public Health because of the volume of records.

"Public Health identifies COVID-associated deaths primarily by submission of what's called a daily report form that we get from health care providers," she said. "Additionally, we do use vital records to identify deaths that are related to COVID-19 by reviewing the cause of death listed on the death certificates, and then we link deaths on the death certificates to those that are listed on the report forms. During the surge, death certificate linkage and reviews were often delayed due to the high volume of death report forms."

Ferrer on Feb. 24 also reported another 2,157 confirmed cases of COVID-19, while Long Beach added 82 and Pasadena 20, raising the overall total since the pandemic began to 1,185,559.

She noted a continuing decrease in the average daily number of new cases, which is now hovering around 1,300 — a dramatic drop from early January but still slightly above the 1,200 daily average seen in early November before the winter surge began.

"We've not yet seen any indication that Super Bowl weekend led to increases in cases, but we still need to be on the watch for these increases over the next week or two, and they can be associated both the Super Bowl and with the Presidents Day holiday weekend," Ferrer said.

The three-day average number of people hospitalized due to COVID in the county has fallen to 2,243, Ferrer said, down dramatically from 8,000 in early January.

According to state figures, the number of people hospitalized in the county as of Feb. 24 had dropped below 2,000, falling to 1,988, with 600 people in intensive care.

Ferrer reported progress in getting older residents vaccinated among various ethnic groups, although Black residents age 65 and over still lag behind other populations. As of Saturday, roughly 29 percent of Black residents age 65 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine. That's up from 20 percent in early February but still behind the 48 percent of white residents 65 and over who have been vaccinated.

She noted, however, older Black residents showed the greatest increase in vaccination rates over a two-week period.

"Improving access to areas of the county that have been hard-hit is our priority," she said. "And these tend to be areas where many Black and Latinx residents live. We have opened additional sites in these areas and are working with community groups who are assisting with registering people in these communities for vaccination appointments. We are relieved to see these early increases in vaccination rates, as they indicate our strategies may be working."

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