The general decline in the number of new coronavirus cases in the United States during the month of January brought relief to some health officials. But new data now shows that there may be a new development on the horizon that could push the pandemic back into very terrible territory. That’s because, according to a new study, the highly contagious strain of the UK COVID is spreading across the United States at an alarming rate and could drastically change conditions next month. Read on to see why experts are so concerned with development and to learn more about when some employees think we can get back to normal, consult Dr. Fauci Just Said that we can never do that again.
The first case of the United Kingdom’s COVID variant – officially known as B.1.1.7 – was not reported for the first time in the US until mid-December. But research released in a preprint on February 7 that has not yet been peer-reviewed found that the highly contagious strain is doubling every 10 days, confirming fears originally raised by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of which can become the most common form of the virus in a matter of weeks.
“Nothing in this article is surprising, but people need to see it,” Kristian Andersen, a co-author of the study and a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, said The New York Times. “We should probably prepare for this to be the predominant strain in most places in the United States by March.”
Experts explain that a mutation officially known as N501Y is what made the UK strain so transmissible, changing the external shape of the virus and allowing it to infect healthy cells more easily. “It looks like an even more sticky velcro”, Michael Worobey, PhD, a viral evolution researcher at the University of Arizona told CNN.
Now, experts warn that the strong waves witnessed in other countries like Portugal, Ireland and Jordan were probably caused by the variant and could create similar conditions in the United States. “There can really be a very serious situation developing in a matter of months or weeks,” Nicholas Davies, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who was not involved in the study, said The times. “These may be early signs that warrant an urgent investigation by public health officials.” And to find out more about what could have a big effect in the fight against COVID, check out Dr. Fauci Just Said This One Thing May Turn The Pandemic
Some experts argue that the focus on vaccinating as many people as possible – especially those over 65 years of age who are at greatest risk for severe COVID – now takes on new importance. One expert compared the current drop in cases as similar to being led to a false sense of security by being in the calm “hurricane eye” just before the worst conditions return.
“I’ve been on calls from Zoom for the past two weeks about how we’re going to manage this,” Peter Hotez, MD, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN during an interview on February 7. “The big wall is about to hit us again and these are the new variants.”
“This can be very, very terrible for our country as we move forward in the spring,” Hotez warned CNN. “Now, we are in a race. We are in a race to see how fast we can vaccinate the American people.”
Although the variant has already caused concern among health officials in its current state, researchers in Britain have also found samples of B.1.1.7 showing another mutation that could also make current vaccines less effective against it. And although experts question whether these mutations will become common or not, some have pointed out that development proves that the new coronavirus is a formidable and unpredictable enemy that we can anticipate that will make us guess.
“We should expect them to appear here,” said Andersen The times future threatening mutations. “Whatever is true elsewhere, it will be true here as well and we need to deal with it.” And for more information on how the pandemic is affecting where you live, check out the severity of the COVID outbreak in your state.