First known cases of COVID-19 variant found in South Carolina, health officials say
A more contagious strain of COVID-19 that recently emerged in South Africa and spread around the globe has been identified in samples from two South Carolina residents, the Department of Health and Environmental Control said Thursday.
The cases, both of which were identified through routine surveillance sequencing, represent the first confirmed cases of the South African variant in the United States.
“The arrival of the SARS-CoV-2 variant in our state is an important reminder to all South Carolinians that the fight against this deadly virus is far from over,” DHEC interim public health director Brannon Traxler said in a statement. “While more COVID-19 vaccines are on the way, supplies are still limited. Every one of us must recommit to the fight by recognizing that we are all on the front lines now. We are all in this together.”
Both cases of the variant, known as B.1.351, were found in adult South Carolina residents — one from the Lowcountry and one from the Pee Dee region — who have recovered from their illnesses and are no longer contagious, DHEC officials said.
There’s currently no known travel history and no connection between the two cases, DHEC said.
Traxler said Thursday that both individuals tested positive for the variant in early January, but declined, in the interest of privacy, to provide additional details about them and with whom they may have had contact.
“We do not have concern at this time based on their contact tracing about there being the potential for any mass, widespread transmission,” she said.
It is common for viruses to undergo changes that result in new versions of themselves, known as variants. Most variants don’t affect how the virus behaves, but some do, health officials said.
Multiple variants of SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, have emerged independently in recent months and are now circulating globally.
The most notable variants are ones first identified in the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa. As of Thursday, all three variants had been identified in the U.S.
While there is no evidence that any of the variants cause more severe illness or increase the risk of mortality, they are believed to be more transmissible, meaning they can spread more quickly through the population, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In addition to differences in ease of transmission, COVID-19 variants also may differ in their ability to be detected by existing diagnostic tests, their susceptibility to current treatments and their capacity to evade natural and vaccine-induced immune responses, according to the CDC.
Experts believe current COVID-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna will protect people against the known variant strains, including the South African one, but it’s not known precisely how effective they will be, Traxler said.
Moderna announced Monday it was developing booster shots to deal with the emerging variants, after studies found its vaccine had not been as effective, albeit still protective, against the South African variant.
“As we seek to defeat the COVID-19 virus, which has created a worldwide pandemic, we believe it is imperative to be proactive as the virus evolves,” Moderna’s CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. “Out of an abundance of caution and leveraging the flexibility of our mRNA platform, we are advancing an emerging variant booster candidate against the variant first identified in the Republic of South Africa into the clinic to determine if it will be more effective ... against this and potentially future variants.”
Traxler said Thursday that one big benefit of mRNA vaccines, like the ones developed by Pfizer and Moderna, is they can be modified quickly to be effective against virus variants as they evolve.
What remains to be seen, however, is how quickly the modified booster doses of vaccine can be mass produced and distributed, she said.
Traxler said she suspected the development and production of booster shots to deal with virus variants would be dependent on how prevalent each variant becomes in the U.S.
If booster shots are eventually seen as necessary for protection against the virus, someone who already had received two doses of the Moderna vaccine would likely need only a single booster shot for maximum protection against the variant, Traxler said.
There isn’t evidence the South African variant has spread widely in South Carolina at this point, so residents should rest assured that the existing versions of both vaccines currently on the market are highly effective against the COVID-19 virus.
State public health officials were notified late Wednesday by the CDC of a South Carolina sample that was tested at LabCorp and determined to be the B.1.351 variant originally identified in South Africa, DHEC said. The state health agency’s Public Health Laboratory then identified a separate case of the same variant in samples it had tested earlier in the week, health officials said.
DHEC said it has been testing random virus samples since last summer to identify any instances of variants and would be increasing the number of samples it sequences going forward.
“We have been doing surveillance on random specimens going back to June and we actually had already been increasing in the recent weeks and couple of months since the variants overseas emerged and became more prevalent,” Traxler said Thursday. “Both the number of specimens that we send to the CDC for sequencing as well as the sequencing that is done at our lab itself have been increased and we’ll continue increasing them as we had been planning to do.”
Traxler said DHEC would not be changing its health and safety recommendations as a result of the variant’s discovery and said the same standard precautions still apply. South Carolinians should continue doing things to mitigate spread of COVID-19 such as wearing masks, practicing social distancing, washing their hands frequently and avoiding large gatherings.
“This is important information for South Carolinians to have, but it isn’t a reason for panic,” Gov. Henry McMaster said on Twitter shortly after DHEC announced it had detected the COVID-19 virus variant.
While the South African variant is believed to spread more easily, it is not currently considered to be more lethal, McMaster posted.
“This is still COVID-19, and we know what we can do to help mitigate its spread — wear a face covering when you’re in close proximity to others, practice social distancing when possible, and be courteous to our neighbors,” the governor tweeted.
A McMaster spokesman said the governor had no intention of imposing tighter restrictions in wake of the variant being identified in South Carolina.
“Viruses like this one, we’ve known for a long time, they adapt, they evolve, and variants were always expected to be seen and to come about,” spokesman Brian Symmes said. “And so we just need to redouble our efforts and recommit ourselves to doing what we all know mitigates the spread of the virus.”
Other states have had cases of the UK strain, called B.1.1.7, and the Brazil strain, called P.1.
Each variant emerged independently and has different characteristics, but all three are believed to spread more easily than the majority of SARS-COV-2 variants.
The B.1.1.7 strain was first identified in December 2020, though British health officials had collected samples of it as early as September.
Health officials said it was unique, as the mutated version of the virus is more contagious than previously identified strains. An epidemiologist at Imperial College London estimated that the virus spreads 50-70% faster than other variants. Research on the strain is ongoing.
By the week of Dec. 9, the variant was responsible for 60% of the cases in London, health experts said.
As of late December, there was no strong evidence that the strain caused more serious symptoms than other strains.
Still, governments across the world locked down travel to and from the United Kingdom.
The strain was first discovered in the United States in the last days of 2020. The man who contracted it lives in Colorado and had no travel history. Public health officials were still conducting an investigation when they announced the discovery.
P.1, the COVID-19 variant from Brazil, was first identified earlier this month in four travelers from Brazil who were testing during routine screening at an airport outside Tokyo, Japan, according to the CDC.
The first known U.S. case involving P.1 was reported Monday in Minnesota. The patient, who became sick during the first week of January, had recently traveled to Brazil, Minnesota health officials said.
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This story was originally published January 28, 2021 at 11:45 AM.
