‘Just a matter of time’: COVID-19 variant identified in Colorado man
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A variant strain of COVID-19 first reported in the United Kingdom has been identified in a Colorado man in his 20s, Gov. Jared Polis announced.
The variant appears to be more transmissible, although it is not believed to cause more severe symptoms and approved vaccines are expected to be effective against it, Colorado health officials noted.
The Colorado patient will remain in isolation until he is cleared by local health officials, Polis’ office said in a press release.
“We were expecting there would be a case here — it was just a matter of time, and now we've found it. There are probably other cases, so we need to do more sequencing so we can find these cases,” Krutika Kuppalli, MD, an assistant professor of medicine in the infectious diseases division at the Medical University of South Carolina and a vice chair of the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s Global Health Committee, told Healio.
“Most importantly, this reinforces that we need to double down on our public health measures to prevent the spread and transmission of COVID-19,” Kuppalli said. “It is very important that we encourage people in the community to continue to wear face masks, to maintain their physical distance and avoid crowds of people so we can get the pandemic under control.”
The variant was identified in a Colorado state lab during a PCR test, where strong signals for the virus’s N gene were identified, but not its S gene. U.K. scientists have reported that the variant, named B.1.1.7, may be more contagious than other strains but does not cause more severe symptoms.
“There is a lot we don’t know about this new COVID-19 variant, but scientists in the United Kingdom are warning the world that it is significantly more contagious. The health and safety of Coloradans is our top priority and we will closely monitor this case, as well as all COVID-19 indicators, very closely,” Polis said in the release. “We are working to prevent spread and contain the virus at all levels.”
Perspective
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This report of the first case of the U.K. COVID variant isolated in Colorado was a no-brainer to me.
Even during the COVID pandemic, travel between the U.K. and the U.S. has been brisk, and the virus knows no borders. The virus does not care if you live in Europe or you live in the U.S. The fact that the 20 -year-old man did not travel to the U.K. was not surprising.
The points that are illustrated in this case to me were not necessarily about the increased virulence as much as the efforts to contain the virus before it reached a point where this variant, or any other variant, of potentially increased transmissibility could hop from one nose and mouth to another. In another time, the virus would not have taken off that much. But there are enough receptors in infected people for it to be exclusive.
What it also illustrates to me is that in the United States, we cannot do a lot of genomic surveillance of COVID-19 variants at 0.003% of cases compared with other countries. The CDC is developing an initiative to do screening of variants, but this is more than 9 months into the pandemic. We've seen record cases already. Above all, the strain is among us, and it will be just a matter of time before we isolate many more cases — not just in Colorado, but in all 50 states.
What we do know about the variant seems scary — increased transmissibility. But what this variant is not is also reassuring. There's no evidence that it causes more severe disease. Our protection and other interventions still work. It is almost certain that the current vaccines will work against the new strain. The variant reminds us to remember that we need to practice all these interventions to protect ourselves, our families, our loved ones and our community.
This would not be the first time that we've see a variant, but possibly the biggest downfall of the variant was that it highlighted the anxiety and the fear that could turn countries against countries, close borders without all the information and separate friends and family from each other at the drop of a hat. Sometimes these interventions can cause more harm than good. Events such as crowding in the face of a lockdown or a border closure breach ironically create more transmission.
At the end of the day, let's rally together, do the things that we know we have to do and not get too worked up over the variant. It is a symbol of how much we still need to do before we conquer this virus.
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