Covid Variant in Connecticut; Not In Essex, Chester or Deep River

ESSEX, CHESTER, DEEP RIVER, CT — Efforts are moving forward in the tri-towns to get people vaccinated and uphold the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations to keep gatherings small and wear masks, but still, the Covid-19 virus is holding on and now it is mutating!

The daily coronavirus positivity rate statewide jumped to 4.49 percent, in the latest data released Tuesday by the Department of Public Health. The number of residents hospitalized with COVID-19 has also risen by 14 beds, to 403 patients.

Potentially more ominous was the news from the Yale School of Public Health that 44 cases of the coronavirus strain B.1.526, the so-called "New York variant," have been detected in Connecticut.
"One of our concerns about this particular variant is that it has the mutation that is also part of the South African variant... that we know in certain cases is causing people who have already had coronavirus to get reinfected with it," Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told CBS Face the Nation on Sunday. "The question is whether 1.526 is responsible for some of the increases we are seeing in New York right now."

According to the CDC, variant B.1.526 was first detected in New York in November 2020.

Yale researchers said the mutation found in the New York variant may make the "natural" immunity normally found in people who have already contracted the infection, less effective.

The New York variant has been classified as a "variant of interest." Viruses in this category "are classified as such because they show resistance to treatments for COVID-19, but they have not shown evidence of increased transmissibility or disease, like the other variants," DPH spokesperson Maura Fitzgerald told Patch Staff Rich Scinto. "So, right now we are keeping an eye on the NY variants, but we are focused on the variants of concern."

Mutations become "variants of concern" only when their new nature makes them deadlier or spread more easily. In early December 2020, the first COVID-19 variants came to the attention of epidemiologists in the United Kingdom ( B.1.1.7) and South Africa (B.1.351). Both were associated with increased incidence of COVID-19, and both have since made their way to Connecticut, along with two so-called "California variants" and one from Brazil.

Variants are spreading throughout the state, however, non have been recorded in the tri-towns of Essex, Chester, or Deep River.

With reporting from Rich Scinto, Patch Staff.