Faster-Spreading Coronavirus Variant Kills Birmingham Man

BIRMINGHAM, AL — A faster-spreading variant of the coronavirus that was first identified in the United Kingdom, known as B 1.1.7, has claimed the life of a Birmingham man, according to a news report on ABC 33/40.

Alfonzia Jackson, 35, died Tuesday at UAB Hospital. The Alabama Department of Public Health said Jan. 27 that three cases of the "UK variant" of the virus had been confirmed in the state, with two in Montgomery County and one in Jefferson.

The ADPH said this new variant has been reported in at least 24 other states, including Tennessee, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina, with 293 cases reported nationwide as of Friday.

Jackson spent more than a week at UAB Hospital, but before being admitted had tested negative for the COVID-19 virus five times, according to the report. Jackson reportedly had symptoms but the negative tests kept him from admitting himself to the hospital. He was eventually taken to UAB with a heart issue, where doctors discovered he had the new variant.

Doctors found that when Jackson was admitted to the hospital Jan. 22, he had blood clots in his heart.

"He was coughing up blood clots," Alfonzia Jackson's widow, Ashley Jackson, said in an interview with ABC 33/40. "So my day from that evening to the end of visitation hours was like taking the suction, suctioning out the blood clots, wiping his teeth off because they were, you know, bloody and then cleaning him up, then holding his hand and doing it all over again."

A GoFundMe campaign was launched by Ashley Jackson before her husband's death to help the family with expenses related to Alfonzia's illness. In her statement on the campaign page, Ashley Jackson said doctors on Jan. 27 told her that her husband's lungs, liver and kidneys were recovering but his heart was still affected, and the doctors were considering a possible artificial heart transplant.

"Yet with that good news came more alarming news," Ashley said on the GoFundMe page. "I was informed by the Jefferson County Health Department that he was diagnosed with the UK strand of COVID."

Dr. Rachael Lee of UAB said a standard COVID-19 virus test would generally detect a new strain of the virus but won’t say what variant it is. She said further genetic testing is required.

"As a correlate to this, when we test for influenza, it will say influenza A or B via PCR, but they won’t have further information regarding which strain it is (like H1N1) unless you do further testing," Lee said.

The United Kingdom identified a variant called B.1.1.7 with a large number of mutations in the fall of 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This variant is believed to spread more easily and quickly than other variants.

In January, experts in the U.K. reported that this variant may be associated with an increased risk of death compared with other variant viruses, but more studies are needed to confirm this finding. This variant was first detected in the U.S. at the end of December 2020.

"Viruses mutate, and due to surveillance, it was expected that cases would be found in Alabama," the ADPH said in a statement Friday. "At this time, many infectious disease experts and the CDC have indicated that the current vaccine should be effective against the U.K. strain. However, this is still being studied."

The U.S. does not have a nationwide system for checking coronavirus genomes for new mutation, according to a New Your Times report.

"About 1.4 million people test positive for the virus each week, but researchers are only doing genome sequencing — a method that can definitively spot the new variant — on fewer than 3,000 of those weekly samples," the NYT report said.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this report said Jackson's death was the first known death in the country from the UK variant of the COVID-19 virus. The article has since been corrected. Patch regrets the error.

GoFundMe is a Patch promotional partner.