John Locher/AP
Healthcare workers test patients in their car at a drive-thru coronavirus testing site run by the University of Nevada Las Vegas School of Medicine and the Nevada National Guard, Friday, July 10, 2020, in Las Vegas.
Published Monday, Jan. 25, 2021 | 12:44 p.m.
Updated Monday, Jan. 25, 2021 | 2:08 p.m.
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A Las Vegas woman is the first person in Nevada to test positive for a more contagious strain of the coronavirus initially discovered in the United Kingdom, health officials said today.
The woman, who is in her 30s, reported no travel history and had limited contact with people outside her household, according to the Southern Nevada Health District. She was not hospitalized and remained isolated in her home, officials said.
The strain was detected in a sample initially tested in the Southern Nevada Public Health Laboratory and confirmed by the state lab, officials said.
Nevada State Public Health Laboratory director Mark Pandori said he doesn’t know the prevalence of the
B.1.1.7 coronavirus strain in Nevada, but he thinks mitigation of its spread is still possible through contact tracing.
“Yes, it’s here, and yes, there’s reason to be concerned about its biological capacity — that’s been shown,” Pandori said. “But the opportunity is here to prevent any further spread of it — or at least significant spread, or at least systemic spread, because we believe we’ve caught it pretty early.”
The Southern Nevada Public Health Laboratory first tested the sample during routine community coronavirus testing. After initial tests suggested that it was the variant, the local lab sent it to the state lab at the University of Nevada Reno medical school last week for advanced genomic testing.
“As more reports of the B.1.1.7 strain were reported throughout the United States, we knew it was just a matter of time that we would report a case here in Southern Nevada,” said Dr. Fermin Leguen, the health district’s acting chief health officer, in a statement. “People can continue to protect themselves by wearing masks in public and when around others, staying home as much possible, and by avoiding large gatherings.”
The UK variant emerged in England in September and was first confirmed in the United States in late December, in a patient in Colorado with no known travel history. As of Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 195 known cases of the variant had appeared in 22 states.
Pandori said that with a few months since the strain popped up globally, it remains relatively uncommon, and though it appears to be more infectious, it’s still to be determined if the UK variant causes more severe illness.
“So if it was significantly more dangerous, we would at least have a strong basis of anecdotes to support that,” he said. “If it’s taken this long to come up with the evidence, it can’t be that significantly different. But we will have to wait and let science to what science does” through proper studies.
Pandori, a virologist, said variation in viruses is normal.
“As the virus circulates and replicates more and more in the community, what happens is, it has a lot more opportunities to make mistakes,” or change itself, “when it copies itself, and that’s how variants are generated,” Pandori said.
“It really does add to the messaging and the importance that yet another problem with letting this virus circulate wildly in a community is that you will have more variation.”
The state lab has routinely analyzed positive COVID-19 samples for the strain since mid-December. This genetic surveillance program also looks for other variants of the disease caused by the coronavirus, including the so-called South Africa strain.
