Madison County Health Officer believes coronavirus variant is more prevalent than what is reported

Madison County Health Officer believes coronavirus variant is more prevalent than what is reported

Alabama.

With less than a month left of the state's mask mandate....healt h officials continue to urge everyone to continue coronavirus safety precautions.

They fear the covid variant may be more prevalent in the community than what is being reported.

Waay 31's ashley carter spoke with the madison county health officer... she learned more about where we are as a state when it comes to the variant.

Dr. karen landers, madison co.

Health officer: "i'm certain there are other cases of variants in alabama that we obviously don't have sequenced."

Doctor karen landers with the state health department told me just because it doesn't look like the covid variant is being transmitted as quickly as the sars-2 strain....doesn't mean that is the case dr. karen landers, madison co.

Health officer: "currently this variant could be circulating and in the absence of surveillance, or in the absence of epidemiologic investigation or in the absence of not showing a pattern on a laboratory test, then again you're not going to pick up as many of the uk variants."

What this means is only certain laboratories in the state can pick up the variant on a coronavirus test....some labs are able to point out unusual patterns in a specimen from a coronavirus test and send it to a lab that can pick up the sequencing of the variant.

Some random tests also with the unusual patterns also get sent to the c-d-c labs to identify sequencing each week...which is the second way they're able to identify the variants....making it easy for certain tests that to be missed this is why it's hard for health officials to say if the new variant is not as contagious as they've thought it be.

Doctor landers says she believes the variant will actually become the more dominant strain of the coronavirus dr. karen landers, madison co.

Health officer: "the variant will likely become the predominant strain, certainly in alabama over the next few months if not before just because of being more transmissible."

Which is why dr landers believes continuing to wear a mask in public even after the mandate ends is important...even if you've already been vaccinated.

In hsv ashley c waay 31 news.