Published 19:43 IST, December 23rd 2020
US may already have hundreds of cases of new coronavirus strain, claim researchers
The new strain of virus found in the UK most likely arrived in the US in mid-November and it may have already infected many people, researchers claim.
The new strain of virus found in the United Kingdom may have already infected many people in the United States, researchers claim. While speaking to CNN, Michael Worobey, who is the head of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, said that the UK strain of COVID-19 most likely arrived in the US in mid-November. He added that he believes that hundreds of people probably have already been infected and it's also “very possible it arrived multiple times in multiple places”.
Countries across the globe have already shut their borders to Britain due to fears about the highly infectious new coronavirus strain. With over 1,000 cases of the variant discovered in the UK, scientists are puzzled to determine if the variant, named as VUI-202012/01, represents an increased health risk especially when some nations began administering the COVID-19 vaccines among people.
While speaking to the media outlet, another professor from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Trevor Bedford, also reiterated Worobey’s claims and said that many infected travellers who left London may have been unknowingly even carrying the strain, which is way more infectious than the first strain. Worobey and Bedford said that they estimate the virus would have arrived in the United States in mid-November. Both the scientists further also scorned genetic sequences of coronavirus in the US to see if any match up the UK variant.
Dr. Fauci ‘not surprised..’
So far, they haven't found any, however, they have said that it is likely the US surveillance system isn’t catching them. On Monday, US top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci had also said that the new COVID-19 variant linked to the drastic surge of cases in the UK has probably already reached the United States. The director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease said that people have to “make that assumption” considering the travel that was permitted throughout the world and the cases of the new strain are hiked in the UK, South Africa. Therefore, Fauci concluded that he would ‘not be surprised’ if the variant has already reached the US.
“You have to make that assumption,” Fauci said. “When you see something that is pretty prevalent in a place like the UK, there are also mutations that we're seeing in South Africa, and given the travel throughout the world, I would not be surprised if it's already here.”
Updated 19:41 IST, December 23rd 2020