- The extra transmissible variant of the UK coronavirus is spreading rapidly in the United States, says a new study.
- The variant, B.1.1.7, is doubling every 10 days in the US, according to the new survey.
- The researchers asked the United States to better monitor variants of the virus to avoid “devastating consequences”.
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The most contagious variant of the coronavirus that originated in the United Kingdom is spreading rapidly across the United States, with cases doubling approximately every 10 days, according to a study published on Sunday.
The study, which has not yet gone through the peer review process, paints a bleak picture of how quickly variant B.1.1.7 will dominate coronavirus cases in the United States if left unchecked.
“These findings show that B.1.1.7 is likely to become the dominant variant in many U.S. states in March 2021, leading to new outbreaks of COVID-19 in the country, unless urgent mitigation efforts are implemented immediately,” they wrote. the report authors.
The research, funded by the United States Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health and Canadian Institutes of Health Research, supports the CDC’s prediction at the end of last month that B.1.1.7 will become the “predominant variant in March”. The report was compiled by researchers from various institutions and laboratory testing company Helix.
According to the new research, the incidence of the variant is growing at around 7% a day nationally, slightly slower than in European countries, including the United Kingdom, where the growth rate is 10.4% a day. The low rate of transmission can be explained by the limited data available or the competition from other, even more transmissible variants of the disease, the report said.
The new, more contagious strain and the resulting increase in cases have prompted British authorities to institute a blockade, which is still underway. UK officials have also warned that the variant may have a higher death rate than the original.
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Although the variant accounted for only 3.6% of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. in the last week of January, it is spreading rapidly and is 35% to 45% more transmissible than other strains that circulate around the country, wrote the study authors.
They estimated that the prevalence of the variant is doubling every 12.2 days in California, every 9.1 days in Florida and every 9.8 days in the country.
Their research indicated that B.1.1.7 was introduced to the country several times, the first being in November 2020. They also said that periods of increased international and domestic travel around Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year provided a “likely explanation” for how the variant entered the U.S. and spread internally.
The emergence of the United Kingdom variant, as well as another mutant strain in South Africa, has led to a discussion among the United States’ specialists in inecious diseases about the best way to inoculate people, including prioritizing secondary vaccines.
The researchers warned that there will be dire consequences if the United States does not step up its efforts to sequence and track emerging variants of the disease. But the UK variant and other strains are still rare enough that there is time to mitigate their effects, they wrote.
“Unless decisive and immediate public health measures are taken, the increased rate of transmission of these strains and the higher effective breeding numbers resulting from SARS-CoV-2 are likely to have devastating consequences for COVID-19 mortality and morbidity. in the United States in a few months, “wrote the researchers.