“I wouldn’t be surprised if you were already here,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, professor of infectious diseases at UCSF School of Medicine, referring to the new coronavirus variant.
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He says that, unlike the United Kingdom, the United States has not performed many genomic tests on positive COVID-19 samples to track emerging variants.
“Mainly because we have a lot of numbers,” said Chin-Hong.
The CDC says that of 17 million positive cases, only 51,000 have been sequenced since the pandemic began. For comparison, the CDC says the UK has sequenced at least 125,000 samples.
“Given the small fraction of infections in the USA that have been sequenced, the variant could already be in the United States without being detected,” says a post on the CDC website.
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Known as the VOC 202012/01 variant, it has become a prominent variety in England.
Given its rapid spread, Chin-Hong says there is speculation that it may be more contagious than the dominant strain in the U.S., however, this has not yet been determined from a biological basis.
“We haven’t really confirmed that it is more transmissible by laboratory experiments,” said Chin-Hong.
He says the data shows that the variant has not proved to be more deadly. He also does not believe that he will escape the protections provided by vaccines that have already been developed.
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“In fact, it takes years for some viruses like COVID to mutate significantly so that a vaccine doesn’t work,” he said.
The CDC has instituted a travel restriction for anyone who comes to the United States and has been in the United Kingdom for the past 14 days. A negative COVID-19 test done within 72 hours must be presented to board an arrival flight. The policy starts on December 28.
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