As a new variant of the coronavirus forces the UK into another blockade, Harvard disease expert Marc Lipsitch says it is time for US officials to focus on the exceptionally contagious mutation.
“I think the new variant is really big business,” Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard School of Public Health TH Chan, told reporters during a conference call on Tuesday.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the new infectious variant that has emerged in the UK appears to “spread more easily and quickly than other variants”. Although there is no evidence that it is more deadly, the researchers estimate that the British variant is between 56% and 70% more transmissible than previous mutations of the virus.
On Monday, England and Scotland announced that they would join the rest of the UK in the blockade, closing schools and businesses and reissuing an order to stay at home, after the increased variant pushed up hospitalizations for COVID-19 in England above April peak.
Given its rapid spread across the UK and at least three dozen other countries, as well as the “very primitive system” of disease surveillance in the United States, Lipsitch said the variant is “probably more widespread than we think”.
The variant has been officially identified in four American states: Colorado, California, New York and Florida.
However, although Massachusetts has yet to report a confirmed case, Governor Charlie Baker told reporters on Tuesday morning that officials can only assume that the variant arrived in the state undetected.
“I think most of us are working on the assumption that he is here,” said Baker. “I mean, there would be no reason not to, given the contagious nature of this new variant.”
Experts say they believe the recently approved COVID-19 vaccines offer effective protection for the variant. But as the launch in the United States and other countries just starts to happen, some are calling for additional action. A study released last month by British researchers suggested that authorities may not be able to control the spread without closing schools, adding that “it may also be necessary to speed up the vaccine’s release a lot.”
Lipsitch said there are “good reasons to expect” that the rapid spread of the variant seen in the UK will be repeated elsewhere.
“It just makes the problem a lot more difficult,” he said. “And it emphasizes the need for vaccination as soon as possible. It also, in my opinion, means that we must focus our control efforts on this variant ”.
Lipsitch, who criticizes efforts to track contacts in the United States, said officials should focus on isolating the identified cases of the COVID-19 variant before it becomes widespread, if possible.
“One of the reasons it has been a challenge to do good contact tracking is that we have so many cases,” he said. “At the moment, we don’t have as many cases, probably, of this new variant. So as long as we can find them and, preferably, stop the spread – it won’t be perfect, it will be far from perfect – but anything we can do to delay the spread of this new variant virus will make control easier and help us in the race to vaccinate more people. “
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