A man receives a COVID-19 nasal swab test at Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in the midst of a coronavirus outbreak in Southern California on December 22, 2020 in Los Angeles, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
Three states in the U.S. have already identified cases of the new coronavirus strain in people with no travel history, a sign that the variant may already be spreading unknowingly among Americans.
Florida health officials announced on Thursday that they found Covid-19’s first case with the new, more infectious variant of the virus. The man, who lives in the county north of West Palm Beach, is in his 20s and has no travel history, the Florida Department of Health said in a statement. Twitter post.
The Florida man is among the first people to be diagnosed with the new variant, known as B.1.1.7., First identified in the UK. California has already identified at least four cases of the new strain in San Diego County among men with no reported travel history. The cases came just days after Colorado health officials detected the first cases in people who had not traveled.
“I’m not surprised that you have a case, and probably more cases, in California,” White House coronavirus advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday after announcing that security officials state health care providers found their first case. “We will probably see reports from other states.”
US health officials said the variant’s arrival in the country is not a surprise, although it could make things worse if it is allowed to spread out of control. Although the evidence indicates that the new strain is transmitted more easily and quickly compared to previous versions of the virus, it is not believed to cause more serious illnesses in infected people and current vaccines should still work against it, Control Center officials said. and US Disease Prevention in a conference call on Wednesday.
Still, the new variant threatens to make things worse if more people are hospitalized as a result of its spread, experts said. December was the deadliest month of the pandemic in the United States, as hospitals reached their maximum capacity and the highly anticipated vaccine launch ended slower than anticipated.
The country reported more than 6.3 million new infections and more than 77,500 deaths in December, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Towards 2021, just over 125,000 people are currently hospitalized with Covid-19 – more than double the peaks recorded in mid-April last year, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project, which is run by journalists from The Atlantic .
Another cause for concern: the first cases of the new variant were found in the country’s most populous states amid a busy holiday season, Mercedes Carnethon, Northwestern University’s vice president of preventive medicine, told MSNBC on Friday.
TSA officials said they scanned 1.28 million passengers at US airports on Sunday after Christmas, the highest number since Covid stopped traveling in mid-March.
“We can be sure, based on the photos we saw at TSA checkpoints during the holidays, that millions of people traveled between these destinations,” said Carnethon. “We can be quite confident that this variant is now everywhere.”
Recent evidence from Imperial College London also shows that the new variant appears to affect more people under the age of 20 than older adults. Part of that change, however, may be because schools remained open for a period of blocking orders, the study said.
The age difference can be a problem because younger people are more likely to work in the community as essential workers and are not the first in line to be vaccinated, Carnethon said.
“I think the priority, in my opinion, should be to reinforce the basic messages we know about how to stop broadcasting from the community,” said Carnethon. “As we well know, our vaccination strategy is starting with the strengthening of our infrastructure of health professionals. However, this is not necessarily the population that is causing the spread of the coronavirus in the community ”.