There could soon be a fourth COVID-19 variant that B.C. health officials consider a “variant of concern.”
Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry says she is concerned about a variant in Southern California, which is believed to have started in Los Angeles and it may be resistant to vaccines.
“We’ve picked up a huge number of variants across B.C., and that’s why we’re calling some specific ones variants of concern. So the one from LA, is still being analyzed by our lab colleagues about whether it does confer a competitive advantage to that virus or not.”
More than 1,000 cases of the southern California variant have been reported, although many health officials there expect there are many more based on inconsistencies in genome sequencing to test for the variant.
As of Friday, B.C. had reported 19 COVID-19 cases with the U.K. variant and nine with the South African variant; those 28 total cases were 10 more than what had been reported four days earlier.
The third variant of concern is from Brazil, and, as of Friday, no cases with that variant had been found in B.C.
“What they reflect, is when you have a lot of transmission in the community, there’s more opportunity for these mutations to happen. And for them to lead to something that gives that strain of the virus opportunity over others. And so it can start to spread more rapidly,” Henry says.
“What they reflect, is when you have a lot of transmission in the community, there’s more opportunity for these mutations to happen. And for them to lead to something that gives that strain of the virus opportunity over others. And so it can start to spread more rapidly.”
The three variants of concern found in B.C. have all been found to be more contagious mutations of COVID-19.