The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday that at least 52 cases of the new strain COVID-19 have been found in the U.S.
California had at least 26 cases of the variant discovered in the UK last month.
Florida (22 cases), Colorado (two), Georgia (one) and New York (one) were other states in which the new strain was found, by CNN.
Although the new variant appears to be more contagious than the new coronavirus, there is no evidence that it is more deadly. There is also no evidence that the strain can escape the effects of vaccines or treatments.
The CDC said that the numbers only indicate infections found in the analysis of positive samples and do not represent the total number of cases circulating in the country. In addition, the agency’s statistics may not immediately match those of state and local health departments.
There may be many more cases of the variant in the United States, according to experts, who criticized the country for not doing more genetic sequencing of virus samples to monitor mutations.
A CDC official told CNN that the agency planned to more than double the number of samples it sequences over the next two weeks, targeting 6,500 a week.
“It is important to monitor the virus and be able to detect these trends that have implications for public health and clinical medicine,” Dr. Gregory Armstrong, director of the CDC’s Office of Advanced Molecular Detection, told CNN on Sunday.
December 19 in Florida is when the first known US sample of the new variant was found, according to the genomic database GISAID. However, collection dates are not available for all samples.
As coronaviruses mutate constantly, doctors and scientists are concerned that the virus may acquire changes that make it less vulnerable to vaccines or treatments.
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