Tag: Carolina

NORTH CHARLESTON, SC – South Carolina was already experiencing one of the country’s worst coronavirus outbreaks when officials learned of an alarming development this week: a new and more worrying variant of the virus, originally identified in South Africa, had been detected in the state.

Shortly after, a second case was discovered with no known link to the first, state officials said Thursday.

Neither patient had a travel history, officials said, suggesting that what many public health experts feared had happened: The new variant of the virus had taken root in the United States.

The arrival of the variant – considered highly contagious and less susceptible to vaccines – underlines the precarious progress the country has made in its fight against the virus. Even as millions of people have been vaccinated and the country slopes downward from more than 150,000 new coronavirus cases a day, new mutations in the virus threaten to undermine what little progress the country has made .

“This is a pivotal moment,” said Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology in California, who studies immunity against infectious diseases. “It’s a race with the new variants to get a lot of people vaccinated before these variants spread.”

Pat Kearns, 87, sat in her car in a crowded parking lot clinic in North Charleston on Friday, after receiving her own coronavirus vaccine amid news of the new variant’s appearance.

“This virus is much faster than us,” said Ms. Kearns, a retired radiology nurse, who said that even after receiving her two shots, she had few plans to venture out immediately. “I’ll stay where I am,” she said. “Stay safe.”

The South African variant, known as B.1.351, is one of many mutations that have emerged as the pandemic has continued. Others include a variant from Brazil, which was detected in Minnesota this week, and one from Britain, which is spreading more widely in the United States.

The variants are believed to be more contagious, and the one from South Africa is among the most concerning as preliminary research suggests vaccines may be less effective against it.

Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech – the companies making the two vaccines currently on the U.S. market – have said their vaccines are slightly less protective against the South African variant, and the companies are considering creating either a booster or a new version to avoid . the variant.

Likewise, Johnson & Johnson, the only major drugmaker developing a single-dose coronavirus vaccine, announced on Friday that its injection would offer strong protection against Covid-19 if approved, with an effectiveness rate of 72% in the United States. But it is less effective against the new variant – falling to 57% in South Africa.

Although this variant appears to partially escape the antibodies created against Covid-19, experts have said that the vaccines, on the whole, should still be effective. Research suggests that even when a vaccinated person gets sick, vaccines can help reduce the severity of Covid-19.

“Vaccines are not an all-or-nothing thing,” said Dr Crotty, who compared being vaccinated against the virus to hitting the brakes in a car accident, to the extent that even a partial braking – or the effectiveness of the vaccine – is much better than none.

But in a troubling development, the variant may also follow a less sharp pattern than the traditional version of Covid-19, which is said to have offered at least short-term immunity to people who have fallen ill. Novavax, a fourth company developing a vaccine, reported that in a small trial in South Africa, around a third of participants had already been infected with Covid-19, but the results suggested that their previous illnesses did not protect them against the new one. variant.

Even though President Biden has banned travel from South Africa from Saturday, the variant could spread significantly in the United States, potentially constituting a large portion of his infections by April.

The developments have landed with a thud in South Carolina, which is experiencing one of the nation’s worst epidemics, behind only Arizona. “The fight against this deadly virus is far from over,” South Carolina interim director of public health Dr. Brannon Traxler said at a press conference announcing the new cases. “We all need to be more vigilant.”

Although new infections have slowed from a peak this month, South Carolina is now reporting more new cases and has more people in hospitals than at any time last year. It also reports the highest number of deaths of the entire pandemic.

It is unclear what role the new variant could play in the spread in South Carolina, where officials have warned of panic and said contact tracing did not indicate “widespread widespread transmission.”

But the new variant only increased the stakes for the state, where Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, has taken a largely hands-off approach to viral restrictions, keeping restaurants and bars open and avoiding a statewide mask order in a strategy he characterized as also good for the economy. Unemployment in South Carolina fell to 4.6%, below the national average.

But experts believe controlling the spread of the virus is critical to stopping any new variant before a potential explosion of cases leads to even more hospitalizations and deaths.

“We need to get the pandemic under control,” said Dr Krutika Kuppalli, assistant professor of medicine and infectious disease physician at the University of Medicine of South Carolina, who often leaves a shift to treat Covid patients. 19 at the hospital only to see bars crowded with people on the way home.

“I don’t want to be here next year to talk about an even tougher virus,” she said, adding: “We have to find a renewed resolution to come together and reach the finish line.”

At Roper St. Francis Healthcare, which has four hospitals in the southeastern part of the state, 17% of beds were filled with Covid-19 patients on Friday, and others were getting off at a drive-thru clinic run by the hospital system. . Dozens of people lined up in cars on a blustery Friday morning to receive the first of two Pfizer vaccines, filling a large parking lot at the North Charleston Performing Arts and Convention Center.

“The demand was not there,” said James Bowron, Roper St. Francis operations manager. “We are inundated with requests.”

Charles Bauman, 75, was relieved to get the shot on Friday, but said he had no plans to change his routine. “We still have to wear our masks and wash our hands,” he said. “It’s going to be like that for a while.”

As a sign of the country’s difficult progress, many people who call now for an appointment in South Carolina may have to wait weeks to get their shots. At the North Charleston clinic, appointments are not available until mid-March, when new variants of the virus are expected to be much more prevalent.

Chris Dixon reported from North Charleston, and Sarah Mervosh from New York.