Covid’s lack of testing capabilities in the United States could mean that the new highly transmissible coronavirus strain, which first appeared in the United Kingdom, is already making its way into communities in the United States
This is according to Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, the medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit at Boston Medical Center.
“To find this strain, what we need to do is take a percentage of the samples that are diagnosed and do in-depth genetic analyzes, and (inside) the United States, our capacity has not been spectacular “, said the infectious disease doctor “The News with Shepard Smith” on Monday. “If the tension is here, we may simply not realize why the holes in our network are so big.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the new variant was not detected in the US
However, the agency said the viruses have only been sequenced in about 51,000 of the country’s 17 million infections. The UK recorded the highest number of strings at 125.00. Infections in the UK reached their second highest daily total on Christmas Eve, with the country confirming 39,036 new cases of Covid-19 that day.
Starting on Monday, the United States will require all travelers traveling from the UK to provide proof of negative Covid-19 testing amid growing concerns about the new variant of the virus.
Dr. Bhadelia, who is also a medical collaborator with NBC News, explained that the measures did not go far enough.
“You can still have people who tested negative when they did the test, get on the plane and test positive later, so that’s why I think the test needs to be linked to some kind of quarantine,” she said.
Japan took more stringent measures and stopped all foreign arrivals. More than a dozen countries have reported cases of the rapidly spreading mutation, including Canada, France, South Africa, Australia, Japan and South Korea.
Health experts in the UK and the USA have noted that while the new variant appears to be more transmissible, there is still no evidence that it is more deadly. Dr. Bhadelia warned that the findings should not make people complacent when it comes to the new strain.
“The problem is that while we don’t think it increases mortality, the fact that it can be transmitted more easily is also more worrying because the more people are infected, the more people end up in hospitals, and potentially die,” she added.