An infectious disease specialist at Boston Medical Center says that an emerging and more contagious strain of COVID-19 may already be in the United States and spreading undetected due to testing obstacles.
The strain, first discovered in the United Kingdom, is considered to be more transmissible, but there is currently no evidence that the mutated virus causes more serious illnesses or increases the risk of death more than the virus strains known to circulate in the United States. according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC says the variant “could already be” in the United States. Why don’t the experts know for sure?
“In order to find this strain, what we need to do is take a percentage of the samples that are diagnosed and do in-depth genetic analysis and (in) the USA, our capacity has not been spectacular”, Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, medical director of the Special Pahtogens Unit on BMC, he told CNBC while appearing on “The News with Shepard Smith” on Monday.
Bhadelia pointed to a recent CDC report stating that, although the new strain of viruses was not found through sequencing – the process for detecting virus mutations – only 51,000 of the 17 million cases in the U.S. have been sequenced.
This means that “if the deformation is here, we can simply lose it because the holes in our network are very large,” said Bahedlia.
“That is why it is important that we continue with all public health measures, because if this strain is more transmissible, and in this country, a safe way to prevent it is to continue with all these public health measures,” he added.
The mutation was first reported in southeastern England and London, where it was responsible for 60 percent of the city’s recent infections, according to the CDC.
On Monday, the United States began requiring all travelers flying from the UK to the United States to test negative for coronavirus 72 hours before their departure. However, the variant strain has also been reported in several other countries, including Canada, France, Sweden, Spain and Japan.
Asked whether the test requirement for trips to the UK is a good precaution to stem the spread of the virus, Bhadelia noted that people can test negative before boarding a flight, but then receive a positive result.
“That’s why I think the test probably needs to be linked to some kind of quarantine,” said Bhadelia. “The other part is that we are only demanding this test from the UK. But … this tension is now in several countries, and so, and the travelers from those countries, right?
“The last part of that is again, since people can get here (and) potentially become infectious after they get there, the best way to find them is to diagnose them quickly and identify whether they have this strain,” she continued . “And this is where that capacity, laboratory capacity, is needed.”
According to the CDC, the agency launched a program last month aimed at tracking emerging mutations in COVID-19. Starting next month, all states will send to the CDC “at least 10 samples every two weeks for sequencing and further characterization”.
“In addition, the CDC’s COVID-19 response is actively seeking samples of interest, such as samples associated with animal infection and, in the future, samples of revolutionary vaccine infections,” says the agency.
The data is reviewed by the CDC and the genomic data is uploaded to public databases for research, public health officials and the health sector, according to the CDC.
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