Mississippi lags much of US in tracking COVID variants. Health dept. hopes to change that
Mississippi lags much of the nation when it comes to tracking the spread of coronavirus variants in the state, but the department of health hopes to make improvements soon.
State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said during a Tuesday press conference that Mississippi is only testing 75 samples per week for variants.
And so far the only one detected is the COVID-19 variant that originated in the United Kingdom — called B.1.1.7.
“We have not identified any of the other variants of concern in the state to date, but it is important for us to continue the surveillance efforts,” he said. “We’re in the process of ramping up our virological surveillance ability to be able to identify additional occurences of the variants in the state.”
There have been nine cases of the U.K. variant identified in Mississippi — the first case reported Feb. 15, after it had been found in 40 other states.
A recent surge of cases of the coronavirus in Europe is believed to be the result of the spread of new variants in countries like Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic. The U.K. variant is likely the main culprit, which is more contagious and has been found to have a higher mortality rate.
A variant that was first discovered in South Africa is the one that has caused the most concern worldwide recently. Early studies show that the COVID-19 vaccines currently available in the U.S. — Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — may be less effective against the South African variant (B.1.351).
A Brazilian variant known as P.1 is a third variant of concern that has been found in the U.S.
Variants are common with any virus.
“Viruses constantly change through mutation, and new variants of a virus are expected to occur over time,” the CDC says. “Sometimes new variants emerge and disappear. Other times, new variants emerge and persist.”
The testing of coronavirus samples for variants requires genetic sequencing that analyzes the structure of the virus to find mutations. While some mutations do harm to the virus, others can make it more lethal or more contagious.
While there has been some progress in the U.S. when it comes to testing COVID-19 samples for variants, states still have much work to do in that area.
In Mississippi, there have been 351 total examples of genetic sequencing that are publicly available, accounting for 0.117% of all cases of the coronavirus reported in the state, based on March 14 data released by the Centers for Disease Control.
Only Tennessee (0.064), Iowa (0.084), Oklahoma (0.087) and South Dakota (0.098) have had a smaller percentage of their COVID-19 cases tested.
This story was originally published March 17, 2021 at 2:51 PM.
