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100 new COVID-19 cases as N.L. grapples with spiralling outbreak
Newfoundland and Labrador reported 100 new cases of COVID-19 — the province's highest single-day total yet — on Thursday, 99 of them in the Eastern Health region.
The single outlying case is in the Western Health region. There is also one presumptive positive case.
There have been no new recoveries since Wednesday's update. The province has 210 active cases, its highest total to date, surpassing the previous high of 192 on April 6.
Testing efforts have also scaled up this week. Since Wednesday's briefing, 1,667 people have been tested, also a record, and nearly double the previous high of 860, set just the day before.
Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald cast a wide net for people to self-isolate, while also shedding light on what public health investigators have learned.
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Covid-19: Kent virus variant 'on course to sweep world'
Prof Sharon Peacock (no relation to Hogwarts) told the BBC's Newscast podcast the new variant has "swept the country" and "it's going to sweep the world, in all probability".
She added: "Once we get on top of [the virus] or it mutates itself out of being virulent - causing disease - then we can stop worrying about it. But I think, looking in the future, we're going to be doing this for years. We're still going to be doing this 10 years down the line, in my view."
Current vaccines were designed around earlier versions of coronavirus, but scientists believe they should still work against the new ones, although... perhaps not quite as well.
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Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, warned Wednesday that variant strains of the coronavirus had been found in eight provinces, and that they could quickly reverse the gains the country has made in recent weeks in the battle against COVID-19.
At least two of three variants of concern are spreading in Canada, in some cases with no known link to travel, and have already led to devastating outbreaks in long-term care homes.
There are many variants circulating around the world, but health experts are primarily concerned with the emergence of three:
1) B117 (Kent), first discovered in the U.K., which has "a large number" of mutations, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
2) B1351, first discovered in South Africa, which shares some of the same mutations as B117.
3) P1, which was first discovered in Japan, in four travellers who had been in Brazil.
Dr. Eric Topol, a U.S. physician, scientist and clinical trials expert who heads the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California, told CBC News in January that the variant first found in the U.K. exhibits changes in the spike protein — a key component of how the coronavirus binds to human cells.
He said those changes are likely behind its higher transmission, with the altered spike protein potentially allowing the coronavirus to infect cells more easily. The other two variants of concern also have changes to the spike protein.
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