New COVID-19 strains turn up in Americas – PAHO

Three new variants of the coronavirus, have been found in 14 countries in the Americas, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said Thursday, prompting concerns about possible heightened spread and severity of COVID-19.

The hemispheric health agency urged health authorities to ramp up public health measures to combat rapidly spreading outbreaks.

“Mutations are an expected part of the spread of any virus,” said PAHO Incident Manager Sylvain Aldighieri. “That’s why we’re asking national and local authorities to continue to strengthen existing disease control activities, including monitoring COVID-19 closely. We need epidemiological surveillance, including expanding regional genomics surveillance, outbreak investigation, and contact tracing. Where appropriate, we need to adjust public health and social measures to reduce transmission.”

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mia Mottley confirmed that the UK COVID-19 variant has been detected here, based on tests conducted by the Caribbean Public Health Agency.

The variant has also been confirmed in countries including Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and St Lucia and the Cayman Islands where the British variant was found in a patient who was previously in transit in Barbados.

In its latest epidemiological update, PAHO said: “It has recently been documented that people infected with the VOC 202012/01 variant have a higher risk of death than people infected with other variants. Preliminary studies suggest that the 501Y.V2 variant is associated with a higher viral load, which could suggest a potential for greater transmissibility.”

Referring to the two variants found in the United Kingdom and South Africa, Aldighieri said that so far, they do not appear to have generated community spread in the Americas. So far, cases appear to be limited to people travelling from the two countries or connected to people travelling from those countries, he said.

The third variant, detected in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, is most prevalent locally and researchers have recently suggested a link with the increase observed during the last weeks in hospitalization in Manaus. “But it’s still early to conclude on the strength of the association between the emergence of the variant and the recent dynamics of transmission,” Aldighieri said.

Hitting a grim milestone, the number of deaths in the Americas due to COVID-19 reached 1,015,534 on Jan 26. The number of people infected with the disease in 56 countries and territories within the Americas reached 44,197,482.

During a recent press briefing, PAHO Director Carissa F. Etienne declared: “The loss of one million people from this virus should serve as an urgent call that we must do more to protect ourselves and each other from getting sick. This includes strong calls to action to reinforce the public health measures that are needed now in each of the places that are seeing outbreaks.”  (SD/PAHO)