South African ‘super-covid’ is in the US

Two South Carolina residents are the first Americans with the South African ‘super covid’ variant that may make vaccines less effective, state health department officials confirmed on Thursday. 

Neither person has a ‘known’ recent history of travel and they have no evident connection to one another as far as health officials can tell.

That’s a worrying signal that the 50 percent more infectious variant has already been spreading silently in South Carolina, if not the broader US. 

Dr Anthony Fauci said that he is more concerned about the South African variant than about the UK’s B117 ‘super-covid’ because South African form has mutations that might render vaccines less effective.

Both Moderna and Pfizer said this week that preliminary lab tests suggest their vaccines are ‘protective’ against the variant, but it does diminish the effectiveness of their shots. 

Each company has said it is developing booster shots to improve the potency of their vaccines against variants, including South Africa’s. 

The South African variant has a mutation in its spike protein (circled in yellow) that makes it more contagious, capable of reinfection and potentially more immune to vaccines. Two people in South Carolina are the first US cases but, because they have not traveled recently and have no evident link, the variant may already be spreading in the US