California covid variant B.1.427/B.1.429 is more transmissible, studies show - The Washington Post

California covid variant B.1.427/B.1.429 is more transmissible, studies show - The Washington Post But evidence from other countries suggests that highly transmissible variants can be suppressed through public health interventions, such as mask-wearing, social distancing and restrictions on gatherings, and by broadening immunity through vaccination campaigns. “Fundamentally, it doesn’t change the direction we are going, which is we want to hold cases down to where we can get the pandemic under control. Simply having a more infectious variant circulating is not going to be the end of the world,” said Charles Chiu, a professor of laboratory medicine and infectious diseases at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine, and the senior scientist behind the new research.

The NYC pathogen reports are not based on solid science

The NYC pathogen reports are not based on solid science: "This wasn't even a 'pre-print' - I was asked to provide comment on someone's draft manuscript that still had tracked changes and didn't include the figures. Based on this, the NYT wrote a story. This is an absolute mess," Nathan Grubaugh, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health, wrote on Twitter.

Like the South African variant, the Brazilian variant does have the mutation that makes it more infectious, and it also has the E484K mutation

The Immune Escape Strain “This made the hair on my neck stand up,” Brooks said. Like the South African variant, the Brazilian variant does have the mutation that makes it more infectious, and it also has the E484K mutation, which raises the unsettling possibility that “it could possibly overcome the vaccine, and it may reinfect.” He compares the coronavirus to the flu or the common cold, which are constantly changing, dodging the body’s immune system. Gregory Armstrong told me of an experiment to determine how many mutations it would take to create what is known as an “immune escape” strain. “They grew it up in tissue culture from a generic sars-CoV-2 in dilute convalescent sera,” he said. “They were eventually able to grow one that had three mutations that conferred almost complete resistance” to the antibodies in the survivors’ blood.

Moderna Announces it has Shipped Variant-Specific Vaccine Candidate, mRNA-1273.351, to NIH for Clinical Study | Moderna, Inc.

Moderna Announces it has Shipped Variant-Specific Vaccine Candidate, mRNA-1273.351, to NIH for Clinical Study | Moderna, Inc.

A New Coronavirus Variant Is Spreading in New York, Researchers Report - The New York Times

A New Coronavirus Variant Is Spreading in New York, Researchers Report - The New York Times Patients infected with virus carrying that mutation were about six years older on average and more likely to have been hospitalized. While the majority of patients were found in neighborhoods close to the hospital — particularly Washington Heights and Inwood — there were several other cases scattered throughout the metropolitan area, said Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia University and a co-leader of the study. “We see cases in Westchester, in the Bronx and Queens, the lower part of Manhattan and in Brooklyn,” Dr. Ho said. “So it seems to be widespread. It’s not a single outbreak.” The team also identified six cases of the variant that pummeled Britain, two infections with a variant identified in Brazil, and one case of the variant that took over in South Africa. The latter two had not been reported in New York City before, Dr. Ho said.

California coronavirus strain may be more infectious—and lethal

California coronavirus strain may be more infectious—and lethal: Other data suggest the variant is more contagious. The scientists found that people infected with the variant harbored about twice as much virus in their noses, an index of viral shedding, which may make them more infectious to others. In the lab, viruses engineered to carry a key mutation found in the variant were better than control viruses at infecting human cells and lunglike structures called organoids. And in one nursing home where the variant took hold, it spread severalfold faster than in four other nursing home outbreaks caused by other viral variants. “The evidence is growing that this [variant] is more transmissible than [its] immediate competitors,” although not as transmissible as some other variants of concern, says William Hanage, an expert on viral evolution at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. (Variants of concern are coronaviruses with mutations that make them more likely to spread, evade vaccines, or make people sicker.)

A COVID-Vaccinated Summer Could Be Wonderful - The Atlantic

A COVID-Vaccinated Summer Could Be Wonderful - The Atlantic Variant strains that increase the transmissibility of the virus could also throw these estimates off, Shaman noted. As the virus mutates, the reliability of immunity from prior infections also changes. The recent outbreak in Manaus, Brazil, suggested that even high levels of past infection didn’t necessarily protect a population for long. Fundamentally, we still do not know how herd immunity will work—if it even does. “The most important thing to remind ourselves of is that herd immunity is only relevant to consider if we have a vaccine that blocks transmission,” says Shweta Bansal, a biologist at Georgetown University. If it turns out that vaccinated people can still carry and spread the virus, then a group cannot assume that they are protected because people around them are vaccinated. It would mean that the finish line is not 70 percent, but 100.