Public health officials say they’ve found a new strain of the coronavirus in North Carolina.
Experts say they expected the new variants to show up in the state at some point, but the familiar guidance of wearing a mask, staying six feet apart, and washing your hands is still the best way to stay safe.
The variant, also called B.1.351, was first identified in South Africa. It was found in an adult in central North Carolina, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. The person told public health officials that they had not had any recent travel.
“Data suggest this variant may be more contagious than other variants but does not suggest that it causes more severe disease. Current COVID-19 vaccines are expected to be effective against this and other new variants,” DHHS said in a statement.
The new variant doesn’t change anything for most people’s day-to-day lives, say researchers and doctors fighting the virus.
“This is no surprise that this has shown up,” Dr. Cameron Wolfe, an infectious disease expert at Duke University, says in an interview with Spectrum News 1.
The variant does not appear to cause more severe cases of the coronavirus, he says. In general, people just need to keep following the public health orders to avoid the coronavirus.
“Mutations will continue to occur, some of which may become more significant, if we can’t drive down the total amount of illness in the community,” Wolfe says. The best way to do that, he says, is through getting more people vaccinated and making sure people are wearing masks.
“This is an absolute call to arms to try and get vaccine rolled out as efficiently as possible so we don’t see these evolutions continue to occur,” Wolfe says. He says he thinks North Carolina state and local public health departments have done a good job getting people vaccinated despite the supply shortages.
“It was only a matter of time before this variant emerged here,” says Dirk Dittmer, a microbiology and immunology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“The fact that we found the variant in North Carolina shows that our predictions worked. So, from a scientific point of view, it’s actually reassuring and a testament to how far our science has advanced,” he told Spectrum News 1.
“To you and me, it doesn’t mean much,” Dittmer says, paraphrasing DHHS Secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen: “Soap will still work against this new South African variant.”
One concerning thing about this South African variant is that one of the class of drugs used to treat COVID-19 patients, monoclonal antibodies, don’t work against this variant, Dittmer says. But, he adds, there are plenty of other medicines that still do work.
He says the vaccines still work against this new strain.
“Viruses change, and so we expect this virus to change too,” he says. No matter how the virus changes, “it still has to go through the mask.”
There may be more particles in the air from some variants, but, Dittmer says, “your mask will still filter them.”
"While we anticipated the arrival of the B.1.351 variant in N.C., it’s a reminder that the fight against COVID-19 is not over,” Cohen says in a recent statement.
“The emergence of variants that are more infectious means it’s more important than ever to do what we know works to slow the spread — wear a mask, wash your hands, wait six feet apart, and get vaccinated when it’s your turn,” Cohen says.