The news comes when President Joe Biden restores the ban on travel to the coronavirus for most non-American citizens of several countries.
The United States reported its first known case of the COVID-19 variant detected for the first time in Brazil.
The Minnesota Department of Health confirmed the case on Monday, the same day that President Joe Biden extended coronavirus restrictions by preventing most non-American citizens who recently traveled to Brazil, South Africa and several European countries from entering in the United States.
The variant of the new coronavirus known as P1 was detected in a specimen from a Minnesota resident with a recent history of travel to Brazil, the state health department said in a statement.
The agency said it marks the first documented instance of the P1 variant in the United States.
Although the so-called “Brazil variant” is considered more transmissible than the initial strain of the virus that causes COVID-19, it is not known whether the disease it causes is more serious.
Biden promised to launch a fierce fight against COVID-19 in the United States, which recorded the majority of coronavirus-related cases and deaths in the world.
“With the worsening of the pandemic and the spread of more contagious variants, it is not the time to lift restrictions on international travel,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told a news conference earlier in the day about new restrictions on travel. travels.
The United States has recorded more than 25 million infections – about a quarter of global cases – as well as more than 420,000 deaths since the pandemic began, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The new head of the United States’ Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned over the weekend that coronavirus-related deaths in the United States could exceed 500,000 next month.
The CDC and the US Department of State also announced that, as of Tuesday, all travelers arriving in the U.S. will need to present a negative COVID-19 test before boarding their flights. This includes American and foreign citizens.
“The Department and the CDC continue to strongly recommend American citizens to reconsider travel abroad and to postpone all non-essential travel,” they said in a statement on Monday.