Latinos are the most infected with the new 'Los Angeles strain' in Southern California

Southern California medical researchers consider that more than half of recent COVID infections 19, who are mostly Latino, carry a new variant of the strain called the “Los Angeles” virus.

“The important thing to bear in mind is that this new variant is more contagious than the predominant last year, but it is not necessarily more deadly, and that pharmaceutical companies are preparing so that vaccines also control this variant, ”Dr. Mario Rosenberg, from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) told Real America News.

The variant of the CAL virus. 20 C was found for the first time in a study they applied in July 1 , 247 COVID-positive patient samples 19 at Cedar Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles . Since then, that laboratory has a sequence.

Between July and October “we hardly saw any cases, but they increased from November; By 22, the variant had grown to represent 35 percent of all coronavirus strains in California and 44 percent of all samples in Southern California, “said Dr. Eric Vail of Cedar Sinai, co-author of the investigation.

Dr. Rosenberg explained that “now this variant has been concentrated in southern California, especially in Los Angeles” and as Latinos are the demographic group with the most infections In the county, “Latinos are the ones who now have the most that variant of California.”

Rosenberg, a Mexican immigrant doctor, commented that it would be difficult to know using conventional tests to detect COVID 19 if a person with a positive test has that variant.

“Most of the tests they are done by taking samples from the nose, to reveal the negative or positive result and that’s it, “said Rosenberg,” but the Center Doctor Cedar Sinai or UCLA have nuclear laboratories that allow the detection of variants and new strains. ”

The so-called“ Los Angeles ”variant or strain, because that was where it was found, now It has also been detected in Northern California, in other 18 states besides Washington, the District of Columbia, and in other countries, according to Cedar Sinai Medical Center that does not identify those nations.

For average patients, if they get the new variant it would be irrelevant, except if it is a mutation that was resistant to the vaccines that are currently applied to the population.

“We prefer to think that the new variant is not resistant to vaccines as long as there is no scientific information to indicate otherwise,” said the Dr. Vail in Cedar Sinai.

Dr. Rosenberg said that “the important thing is that the pharmaceutical companies that make the vaccines have already learned about this new strain and its variants; so they have already taken on the task of making sure that the vaccines are effective with this strain as well. ”

Until now, CAL. 20 C is just one among other variants that have reached wide circulation, such as those first identified in the UK (B 117), in South Africa (B 1351) and in Brazil (B 11248).

Dr. Janine Plummer, from the Cedar Sinai Center for Bioinformatics, said that “what is unique about the Southern California strain is that it has already had five variants, with modifications in protein, so they need do more studies, because that’s how vaccines are developed. ”

Dr. Rosenberg said that what happens is that the virus will try to survive in the way it can, and, as with other viruses, it often does so through mutations.

“In the end it is not different from how the virus would be, for example, from influenza,” he said. . “The influenza vaccine is applied every year, not because it needs to be renewed because it lost efficacy, but because in one year the influenza virus already had variations, mutations, which merit changes in the vaccines.”

In a recent collective editorial in which Dr. Anthony Fauci participated, a group of scientists highlighted that “the data so far suggests that currently licensed coronavirus vaccines could still prevent infection with these variants, but will require updates over time as variants evolve. ”

They reported that“ some companies have indicated plans to manufacture and test emerging variant-based vaccines. ”