Tue., July 6, 2021
Eleven cases of a COVID-19 variant detected in about 30 countries and recently flagged by the World Health Organization have been found in Canada. None of them are in Ontario, but public health officials here say they are now testing all positive samples formutations.
Lambda, first detected in Peru last August, was designated a “variant of interest” by the WHO in mid-June, and is becoming more common in other South American nations, including Chile, Ecuador and Argentina.
“It’s an emerging situation. There’s no reason to be panicked,” said Ashleigh Tuite an infectious disease epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto.
“I think we’re in the period of watchful waiting where we do want to monitor it and see if it is starting to replace some other variants.”
Public Health Agency of Canada spokesperson Anna Maddison said in an email that the agency is aware of 11 cases in the country as of Monday and is “monitoring carefully” through a program with provinces and territories to identify new COVID virus variants. They are also watching “associated research related to transmissibility and vaccine effectiveness.”
At the moment, there have not been any cases detected in Ontario, a spokesperson for Public Health Ontario confirmed.
In mid-May, provincial labs moved to a “genomic surveillance strategy” based on samples of eligible COVID cases (excluding ones that don’t have enough of a sample volume or viral load to be analyzed). But as of mid-June, all eligible COVID-19-positive cases are being sent for genome sequencing, which can detect variants like Lambda, confirmed a spokesperson for Public Health Ontario in an email.
Lambda is not to be confused with the highly contagious Delta variant, which was first confirmed in India, or Alpha, which was first confirmed in the U.K. The World Health Organization names variants after different letters of the Greek alphabet.
Delta is a variant of concern, because it’s highly contagious, said Tuite. It seems like Lambda is also highly transmissible, from the way it’s behaving in Peru, but the data is still emerging on that.
One recent study published online, a pre-print that hasn’t yet met the gold standard of peer review, suggests that the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna) should still work in offering protection against Lambda, although they are a bit less effective.
One of the reasons why Lambda ison the global “watch list” is because it has been detected in so many countries, including the U.K. and the U.S., said Tuite.
Like Alpha and Delta, it has mutations on the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but on different parts of it.
It seems to be “out-competing” other variants in Peru,” she said. While it’s always hard to predict what COVID will do next, it does seem like it’s getting more contagious, instead of weakening and turning into a more benign cold or flu-like illness.
“The virus is still figuring out its superpowers,” she added. “It’s getting better and better, which is not a good situation to be in.”
Developing countries that don’t have access to as many vaccines as wealthier nations like Canada are particularly vulnerable to the development of new variants like Lambda, as there is still a large unprotected population for them to rip through.
“One of the things everyone’s looking at is competition between variants,” said Omar F. Khan, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and immunology at the University of Toronto
“You can often tell which one is most transmissible and most worrisome because they overrun the other ones, kind of like how Delta overran Alpha in North America.”
This is a “problem” for Canadians, even as our own vaccination rates rise, given our interconnectedness with other nations.
“Does this mean we’ll have to go back into lockdown? No one knows and hopefully not, but that’s why it’s really important to understand even as we start opening up, we’re still at risk because it’s globally an unresolved problem,” Khan said.
“It just shows you how susceptible and vulnerable we are, and we just need to get the vaccines out there,” he added.
“Resolving it globally fixes it locally.”
For individuals, he added, it comes back to the same message, “to get your full vaccination course, which means your two doses.”
The other risky scenario is when there is a partially vaccinated population with high transmission, such as in the U.K, which Tuite calls “a recipe” for the development of variants that evade immunity.
That’s one reason why it makes sense to continue with public health measures, like not jumping ahead to Phase 3 of reopening.
“At least in Ontario I think we’ve been doing a really good job on that, as much as people are impatient to reopen, the fact that we’re getting our vaccination coverage up in the context of not having widespread transmission is a really good thing,” she said.
“Because it does reduce the chance that we’ll have the emergence of a variant of concern that’s homegrown.”
Article From: The Star
Author: By May WarrenStaff Reporter
