Two cases of the British variant of the coronavirus have been identified in Suffolk County, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced yesterday.
Suffolk cases were among the four new cases identified by the state laboratory. The other two were identified in Saratoga County and Warren County. The first case of the UK strain in New York was identified earlier this month in Saratoga County.
These newly identified cases bring the total number of known cases of the United Kingdom variant in New York to 22. Two of these known cases were previously identified in Nassau County.
The British strain of the virus is a more contagious variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Known as B.1.1.7, the variant appeared last month, and the rapid transmissibility of the variant alarmed health officials in the UK and prompted Prime Minister Boris Johnson to implement new national blockades. The virus outbreak has since affected hospitals in the UK
Public health officials in the United States have monitored the spread of the British variant of the coronavirus, which they say is 50% more contagious.
The CDC said last week that the UK variant is expected to become the predominant strain of the virus in the United States in March.
“At the moment, we are in a race between the speed with which we distribute the vaccine and the speed with which the infection is spreading,” said Cuomo yesterday afternoon at a news conference.
“The good news – the infection rate is a function of people’s behavior and is now on the decline, which means New Yorkers are acting responsibly,” he said.
“The bad news – not only is the federal vaccine supply not keeping up with our ability to administer it, but we continue to see new examples of the UK strain, which is much more communicable,” said Cuomo.
The UK variant is not believed to cause more serious illnesses than the virus that has spread around the world since it was first detected in China in December 2019. Since then, it has infected almost 97 million people worldwide and caused more than 2 million deaths, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. In the United States, which leads the world in infections and deaths, the virus has infected 24,135,690 people and killed 400,306 people, according to the CDC.
The state’s Wadsworth Lab is continuously testing other strains of the COVID-19 virus and, so far, no other variant than the UK strain has been found in New York, Cuomo said yesterday.
Across the state, the test’s positivity rate dropped to 6.8% on Monday. The virus is spreading more slowly in New York, but the number of new cases per 100,000 inhabitants – 76.5 – is still at a dangerous level.
Currently, only South Carolina (97 per 100,000), Arizona (92.8 per 100,000) and California (92.3 per 100,000) have more severe outbreaks than New York. Nationally, the number of new cases is 60 per 100,000.
In Suffolk, the new cases are 110.5 per 100,000. In Nassau, the new cases are 99.7 per 100,000.
There were 1,224 new cases reported in Suffolk on Monday and 1,096 in Nassau. The positivity rate for the Long Island test was 7.6% on Monday. It was 7.9% in Suffolk.
We need your help.
Now, more than ever, the survival of quality local journalism depends on your support. Our community is facing an unprecedented economic disruption, and the future of many small businesses is threatened, including ours. It takes time and resources to provide this service. We are a small family business and we will do everything in our power to keep it running. But today, more than ever, we will depend on your support to continue. Support RiverheadLOCAL today. You trust us to stay informed and we depend on you to make our work possible.