The British variant of the coronavirus could become the predominant strain in the United States in March, according to a report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention published Friday.
So far, only 76 cases of the variant, called B.1.1.7, have been identified in the country, in 10 states, the CDC said.
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But the models project that the variant may see “rapid growth” in the coming months, putting even more pressure on the health care system.
“We are very concerned about this variant,” said Michael Johansson, one of the study’s authors and co-leader of the modeling team for the CDC’s Covid-19 response.
Johansson said the CDC is working to increase efforts to do more testing for these variants in the U.S.
The report comes at a time when the US continues to see cases exceeding 200,000 a day. Thursday was the third day in a row that more than 3,000 people died from Covid-19 in the United States, with a daily total of 3,957. Hospital systems across the country are overloaded with Covid-19 patients.
There is no evidence to suggest that the UK variant may make people sicker. But a faster spread will certainly lead to more cases overall, the study’s authors wrote, “exacerbating the burden on an already strained health system and resulting in more deaths.”
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The increased contagiousness of the variant means that the United States must double its mitigation strategies, including detachment and masking, as well as increase vaccination rates, said the CDC.
“The greater transmissibility of variant B.1.1.7 ensures universal and increased compliance with mitigation strategies, including distance and masking,” wrote the study authors.
Those mitigation measures include the rapid launch of Covid-19 vaccines, the CDC wrote, and are crucial to slow the initial spread of the variant in the UK, the CDC said.
“We know that people are tired and discouraged by what happened with this pandemic,” said Johansson. “But we know that we can act decisively now, we can turn the corner and really help prevent another wave from coming in the spring.”
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