A new study found that a previously undetected coronavirus strain has spread to 15 countries, including the United States, unknowingly for months, according to a study published by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) Emerging infectious diseases.
Included in the study’s collaborations are: WHO Collaborating Center for Epidemiology and Infectious Disease Control, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; Health Data Discovery Laboratory, Hong Kong; Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom; The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA; Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. The researchers found that the variant first appeared in the UK in early December 2020, subsequently spreading to the USA, Ireland, France, Greece, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Romania, Poland, Turkey, Cyprus , Portugal and India.
“When we learned about the UK variant in December, it was already spreading silently across the globe,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin and professor of integrative biology, in a statement to UT News.
“We estimate that the B117 variant probably arrived in the U.S. in October 2020, two months before we knew it existed,” she added.
In terms of the impact of the study, Meyers said, “This study highlights the importance of laboratory surveillance.”
“Rapid and extensive sequencing of virus samples is critical for the early detection and tracking of new variants of concern,” she noted.
cnxps.cmd.push (function () {cnxps ({playerId: ’36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b’}). render (‘4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6’);});
if (window.location.pathname.indexOf (“656089”)! = -1) {console.log (“hedva connatix”); document.getElementsByClassName (“divConnatix”)[0].style.display = “none”;}
Along with the article, the consortium has also developed a tool for genetic sequencing that helps to detect other variants of the coronavirus, which will assist in surveillance efforts.
“Health officials are looking for better ways to manage the unpredictability of this virus and its future variants,” Spencer Woody, a postdoctoral fellow at UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, told UT News. “Our new calculator determines how many positive SARS-CoV-2 samples should be sequenced to ensure that new threats are identified as they begin to spread.”
