5 things to know about lambda and other covid variants

The delta variant of covid-19 is the main focus of health officials right now because it accounts for most new cases across the country, but experts also have an eye on the lambda variant that already swept through South America.

The lambda variant was discovered in Peru in December , according to the World Health Organization, which has labeled it a “variant of interest.”

According to the WHO, lambda has been identified in 29 countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Spain, Chile and Argentina, Newsweek reported.

The outlet reported the lambda variant has come to represent about 90% of covid cases in Peru.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health notes that variants “continue to be identified both in the United States and across the globe. Viruses are constantly changing, and viral mutations are common.”

Pennsylvania has confirmed alpha, beta, delta and gamma variants among its residents’ cases. The department noted that, while the current vaccines seem to tamp down severity among the variants, some new mutations are linked to easier transmission from person to person.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh-based infectious disease expert who serves as a senior scholar at the John Hopkins Center for Health Security, addressed several questions from the Tribune-Review about the lambda variant and variants in general:

Another variant? How do they come to be? Do they die off on their own?

“The virus has been mutating ever since it first jumped into humans, and it’s been generating lots of variants. You only hear about the variants that are of interest or concern, but there are many other variants out there. That’s just naturally what viruses do. When they copy, when they infect people, they make millions of copies of their genes. There’s going to be some mutations and mistakes that get made and … most of those are going to have no consequence.

“It’s a normal biological fact when you’re dealing with viruses that they’re always going to be mutating and generating new variants.

“Once a variant goes out there in the world, it’s competing with all the other variants and the original version of the variant, so some may come and go. They may become extinct if they get out-competed, just like any other biological species when they’re under competition. What we’re seeing with the delta variant is that it makes it very hard for any other version of the virus to spread because it is so fit.”

Is covid-19 going to become like the flu, where we need updated vaccines for new variants?

“The flu virus is from a different family. The reason we update vaccines has to do with where the flu virus mutates and how ineffective it makes our vaccines. With SARS-CoV-2, even with these most troublesome variants … the vaccines still perform exactly as they’re expected to against severe disease, hospitalization and death.

“To me, that’s the threshold. I think that the analogy goes only so far with influenza because influenza is a different virus from a different viral family that has different characteristics.”

What does another variant mean for the vaccinated population?

“What we’ve seen so far with the variants is that, when vaccinated people have breakthrough infections, they’re very mild and highly unlikely to result in hospitalization or death. I think it’s very hard for a variant to develop the ability to nullify everything that a vaccine does, so seeing people that are vaccinated landing in the hospital to a high degree — I think that’s going to be a very high threshold for a virus to be able to clear.

“So I think that, while breakthrough infections might occur with variants, they’re going to be mild as a result of the impact of the vaccine.”

What does another variant mean for the unvaccinated population?

“It depends on where the unvaccinated people live. The lambda variant … isn’t having an easy time establishing itself in a country that is basically bathed in the delta variant. But with all these variants, the risk that the variants pose is something that’s self-inflicted basically for anybody above the age of 12. The vaccines are the solution to the variants.”

What does ‘viral load’ mean and why is it important when discussing variants?

“Viral load is the quantity of virus present in a person which can be used to predict their infectiousness. Someone with a high viral load would be predicted to be more infectious than someone with a low viral load.

“The viral load can be different based on lots of things: whether or not somebody is vaccinated, how much … virus they were infected with, where they are in their course of illness. The viral load might be higher just at the time of symptoms and then it will go down as you get farther out in the illness. Certain variants do have the ability to create more viral load in the host. That delta variant is associated with higher viral loads.”