Two independent research groups published findings that confirmed what many scientists have long suspected: the United States has its own viral variants COVID-19 that are different from the UK and South African lineages that have been headlines in recent weeks.
On Wednesday, researchers at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center announced two different, recently identified variants. The next day, researchers at Southern Illinois University said they found a variant that may have emerged months ago and spread quickly across the country. The variant is probably the same or similar to one of the variants identified by Ohio researchers.
Although viruses mutate constantly, these mutations are not intrinsically dangerous, experts warned. More scientific experiments will be needed to show whether the newly identified American variants are more transmissible, more deadly, or whether they can affect the vaccine.
And the researchers predicted that even more variants could be identified in the coming weeks as more scientists start looking for them.
“This should be a wake-up call that we are not doing enough genomic surveillance,” said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist and associate researcher at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University School of Public Health.
“We’ll see a lot of those roles come out,” said Rasmussen, who was not involved in either study. “Yes [the variants] they are associated with greater transmissibility or remain unseen. “
Since the advent of new variants around the world, it has been feared that they will cause more serious diseases and deaths, be more transmissible and make vaccines ineffective. It first started with identified variants from the UK and then from South Africa, which are believed to be more transmissible but not more deadly. But current vaccines are unlikely to be undermined, according to very preliminary research.
Researchers at Southern Illinois University call this American variant 20C-US. The variant is not new, it has just been identified. Its origins go back to a sample of patients in Texas since May 2020. Since then, the variant appears to have spread across the country. According to Dr. Keith T. Gagnon, one of the lead researchers in the study published by Southern Illinois, 20C-US now commits approximately 50% of samples in the country. It is currently widespread in the Upper Midwest, which is why researchers in the state of Ohio detected a surprisingly similar variant.
Dr. Daniel Jones, one of the lead authors of the Ohio State study, told ABC News that these variants could belong to the same lineage, but more research is needed on each of them.
Although some researchers, including Dra. Deborah Birx, of the White House working group, has speculated that there could be an American variant surrounding the nation, these two studies being the first iron proof.
Gagnon said U.S. scientists have taken months to identify this variant because the United States does not control and systematically monitor the constantly changing genetic composition of COVID-19 samples collected from patients.
Gagnon also said it is possible that the 20C-US variant will be more transmissible, especially with the increase in infections in the fall and winter. The variant could have been lucky and gained strength, as people spent more time indoors and saw family and friends on holiday without proper social distancing and wearing masks.
With several vaccines available, there are fears that this new U.S. variant will make vaccines ineffective. But so far there is no evidence that mutations affect the effectiveness of vaccines.
“It was here, under our noses for months,” Gagnon said, meaning that volunteers who were vaccinated in the large late-stage vaccine trials were probably exposed to it and most were protected.
“It doesn’t seem to hinder vaccines,” Gagnon added. Ohio State researchers agreed with those sentiments at their news conference earlier this week.
The other variant discovered by Ohio state researchers was found in only one patient. It has similar mutations observed in the UK and South African variants, but was not associated with travel and developed independently here in the United States. It is not clear what part of the population has this variant and whether it will be important.
Both groups recommended staying calm and waiting for experimental studies to determine what these variants will do.
“We’re not prepared to react too much,” said Peter Mohler, scientific director and co-author of the study at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.
“We want to make sure we study these [variants] in the laboratory and get very good data ”to determine if transmission and mortality change, he added.
But researchers also warn that the longer COVID-19 exists, the more likely mutations and variants will be. And each time we will have to determine if the variants are more transmissible or deadly.
Sean Llewellyn, MD, Ph.D., is a resident physician in family medicine at the University of Colorado and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit. Sony Salzman is the coordinating producer of the unit.