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Michigan readies for impact of new COVID strain that could dominate the US by March - Detroit Free Press

Michigan readies for impact of new COVID strain that could dominate the US by March - Detroit Free Press

Michigan readies for impact of new COVID strain that could dominate the US by March - Detroit Free Press
Jan 18, 2021 3 mins, 24 secs

Health officials are concerned about what the UK variant of COVID means for Michigan case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths.

These infectious disease guardians — scientists at the Michigan Bureau of Laboratories who do whole genome sequencing of COVID-19 test samples — clanged the warning bells on Saturday. .

They alerted state health officials and the public that a new, more transmissible variant of SARS-CoV-2 was detected in a test sample from Washtenaw County.

Called B.1.1.7 or the United Kingdom variant because that's where it was first identified in September, health officials are concerned about what its arrival in Michigan could mean for case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths. .

Although this strain of the virus is not more deadly and isn't known to make people more severely ill than other previously identified strains, B.1.1.7 spreads more easily. .

"One way to think about it is if one person generally infects two other people on average with coronavirus, with the B.1.1.7 variant, that one person might infect three other people on average.

"What I always come back to is this: If it spreads faster, that means that there's going to be more people who are going to get infected and that means that there's going to be more people who are going to get sick and be hospitalized.

The B.1.1.7 variant was detected Saturday in a COVID-19 test sample from a woman living in Washtenaw County who had traveled to the U.K., according to state health officials. .

More: Michigan pressured to distribute COVID-19 vaccines faster — or have doses withheld.

It takes a minimum of five days to fully sequence a COVID-19 test sample to identify the particular strain, said Heather Blankenship, the bioinformatics and sequencing section manager at the state laboratories.

The Washtenaw County woman and her close contacts are now all in quarantine, state health officials say.  .

If that happens, the CDC warned it could "threaten strained health care resources, require extended and more rigorous implementation of public health strategies, and increase the percentage of population immunity required for pandemic control.".

And cases of the B.1.1.7 variant have been detected across many other European countries, leading to curfews in France and extended school closures in Germany.

"We get asked what should we do about this variant," said the state's epidemiologist Sarah Lyon-Callo during a news conference with reporters in early January, before it was detected in the state. "I think of it as this virus has kind of stepped up its game a bit in terms of its ability to transmit between people.

"We are going to be have to be even more careful about some mitigation strategies," said Dr.

Arnold Monto, a professor of epidemiology and global public health at U-M who serves as acting chair of the U.S.

He said state public health leaders will have to watch to see whether the B.1.1.7 variant gains a foothold here. .

Marty Soehnlen, director of infectious disease at the state labs that do the bulk of viral surveillance in Michigan, said her team is always on the lookout for significant changes like those in the B.1.1.7 variant, and can see how the virus spreads from one person to the next based on the mutations. 

"From the public health side, we really like it for transmission patterns, figuring out how to investigate our outbreaks," she said

So far, the research suggests that the current COVID-19 vaccines on the market will still be effective for the B.1.1.7 variant, Lauring said. 

"Obviously, the whole reason that you want to do large numbers is to be able to take good public health actions, and we need data to be able to provide to our epidemiologists so they can do something for our citizens."

Now that the UK variant has been detected, that means only the B.1351 variant, also known as the South African variant, has yet to be found in samples from Michigan, she said. 

"If you're working in a public health laboratory, you're choosing to do something because you see the most interesting of cases and you get to try to help save lives while doing it," Soehnlen said

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