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© Travis Long / Zuma Press
A highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus that was first identified in the UK is spreading rapidly in the US and is likely to become the dominant strain circulating in the country in March without measures to slow it down, health officials said federal.
Health officials called on Friday to increase measures such as wearing masks and social distancing to curb the spread of the most contagious variant. Otherwise, it will intensify the pressure on hospitals that are struggling to deal with the increasing cases.
A year after the detection of a new coronavirus in Wuhan, China, the pandemic it spawned has reached a perilous point. Vaccines are now available to stop it, but deployment in the United States has been slow and newer variants of the virus that spread faster are now threatening disease outbreaks.
The B.1.1.7 variant had infected at least 76 people in 12 states as of January 13 and threatens to worsen the pandemic in the United States in the coming months as the number of daily cases and hospitalizations is already at levels records, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a report modeling the potential impact of the variant.
“We expect these numbers to increase in the coming weeks,” Jay Butler, CDC deputy director for infectious diseases, said in an interview.
The variant could fuel an exponential growth of new cases, becoming the dominant strain in late March if more public health measures are not put in place to stop it, said Michael Johansson, biologist and modeler of the Covid-19 response of the CDC.
Although the new variant does not appear to cause more serious illness, it is more contagious than the currently dominant strain of the coronavirus, the CDC said.
This means it could lead to more hospitalizations and deaths by infecting more people overall, the agency said, exacerbating the pressures on health care systems that are already at or near capacity.
The United States has a short time frame to step up measures such as social distancing and the wearing of masks to prevent B.1.1.7 from spreading widely, the CDC said. Such precautions would also save time for vaccination campaigns to start having an effect on transmission rates, the agency said.
That means people should wear masks, stand at least six feet from each other, avoid crowds, wash their hands and get vaccinated, the CDC said.
The new variant is believed to be 50% more transmissible than the strain currently dominant in the United States, but experts at the agency said they believe existing prevention strategies are working.
“If you don’t wear a mask or if you get a little lax about it because you are tired of wearing the mask, I really encourage you to wear the mask,” Dr. Butler said.
He urged the same endurance in avoiding congregating with people outside his own home: “Now is not the time to let go.”
“It doesn’t mean that businesses have to be shut down or things like that, but it does mean that we have to take steps to be able to protect ourselves and limit our contact with others,” Dr Butler said.
The CDC has also warned health systems to prepare for an even bigger surge and said people who do not show symptoms of Covid-19 but are at risk of infection should be tested.
Covid-19 vaccines are expected to work against the new variant, according to Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc., which make both injections permitted in the U.S. As researchers study this issue, however, the spread of the new variant means that ‘About 80% of the population should be vaccinated to stop Covid-19, CDC scientists said. This is about 10 percentage points more than what some federal officials initially expected.
The agency is monitoring the emergence of other new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in the United States, Dr Butler said. The agency recently issued an order requiring all international air passengers traveling to the United States to test negative for Covid-19 within three days before their flights.
The CDC and other health entities are increasing genomic surveillance to better detect cases of the new variant. The agency implemented a new SARS-CoV-2 strain surveillance program in November and is working with other health agencies to strengthen surveillance.
Laboratories are currently sequencing about 6,000 positive SARS-CoV-2 samples per week in the United States, said Gregory Armstrong, director of the CDC’s advanced molecular detection program. More than 200,000 people currently test positive every day in the United States
“We believe this is more than what we need to choose new and emerging variants, but we have the capacity to increase that,” said Dr. Armstrong.
Write to Betsy McKay at [email protected]
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