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A new variant of coronavirus identified in South Africa was found in the United States for the first time.
South Carolina officials say two of these cases have been diagnosed in the state. The two cases do not appear to be related, nor do people have a history of recent travel, according to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Viruses mutate constantly and many variants of the coronavirus are circulating around the world. However, scientists are mainly concerned with three that seem to spread more easily.
Other variants reported for the first time in the UK and Brazil have already been confirmed in the USA.
The researchers predicted that it was only a matter of time before the variant identified in South Africa also reached the United States.
Speaking on ABC’s Good Morning America on Thursday, the leading infectious disease specialist in the U.S., Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the South African variant was not yet in the U.S. – but hours later the situation appeared to have changed.
He said the South African variant “bothered me” because it seems more resistant to existing approved vaccines, prompting producers to start developing booster vaccines.
Joe Biden reinstated Covid-19 travel restrictions on Monday for most non-American travelers arriving from Brazil, the United Kingdom and South Africa. The CDC currently recommends Americans not to travel.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is considering a request from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) to provide assistance in administering the Covid-19 vaccine, a spokesman said on Thursday.
“Given the importance of the request, it will be reviewed urgently, but carefully to determine which DoD assets can be safely made available to support the effort,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.
Although the statement does not provide the number of soldiers that may be involved, a US official said it could number in the thousands.
And in a worrying development in New York, the state health department may have underestimated the number of Covid-19 deaths among residents of state homes by up to 50%, according to a report released by the state attorney general’s office on Thursday. market.
The report, issued while the state prosecutor’s office continues to investigate the response of nursing homes to the Covid-19 pandemic, indicated that some facilities have underreported deaths to the state health department.
It also found that the health department did not account for the deaths of residents in nursing homes who were transferred and died in hospitals in some cases.
“As the pandemic and our investigations continue, it is imperative that we understand why asylum residents in New York have suffered needlessly at such an alarming rate,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.
The report sheds light on several errors in the state’s Covid-19 response in nursing homes, for which Governor Andrew Cuomo has been criticized since spring, when New York was the center of the coronavirus epidemic.
Cuomo’s administration was criticized in particular for guidelines it issued on March 25, saying that nursing homes could not deny the entry of Covid or suspected Covid patients.
That guidance was rescinded through an executive order in May, but the attorney general’s report concluded that “it may have led to an increased risk of fatalities in some facilities”, where the disease spread like wildfire.
A Cuomo representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The New York City Department of Health reported 6,423 deaths of nursing home residents due to Covid-March 19 to August 3, based on reports from 619 nursing homes, although that number may be up to 50% lower than the reality, the attorney general’s report said.