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Federal health officials sounded the alarm on Friday that a rapidly spreading and much more contagious variant of the coronavirus is expected to become the main source of infection in the country by March, potentially fueling a new wave of cases and deaths.
In a study released Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said its forecast indicated outbreaks caused by the new variant could lead to a booming pandemic this winter. He called for a doubling of preventive measures, including more intensive vaccination efforts across the country.
The variant is not known to be more fatal or to cause more serious illness. But the dreadful warning – covered by limited data on the prevalence of the variant first identified in Britain – landed in a week when the country’s nascent vaccination campaign was hampered by confusion and limited supply. as demand increased among a growing number of eligible people.
Only 76 cases of the variant have been identified so far in the United States, but the actual number is believed to be higher and is expected to increase in the coming weeks, officials said. They pointed out that current mitigation strategies were effective against the new strain, urging Americans to be vigilant by wearing face masks, keeping a distance of six feet or more from other people, washing their hands frequently, reducing interactions with people outside their home, limiting contact and avoiding crowds.
But spikes in cases threaten to cripple already overwhelmed hospitals and nursing homes in many parts of the country. Some are at or near capacity. Others have faced troubling infection rates among their staff, causing shortages and surging patient numbers.
“I want to stress that we are deeply concerned that this strain is more transmissible and may accelerate epidemics in the United States in the weeks to come,” said Dr. Jay Butler, deputy director of infectious diseases at the CDC. “We are sounding the alarm bells and urging people to understand that the pandemic is not over and that it is by no means time to throw in the towel.”
“We know what is working and we know what to do,” he said.
Covid cases and deaths have broken record after record across the country, with the maximum number of deaths, 4,400, announced on Tuesday. At least 3,973 new deaths and 238,390 new cases were reported Thursday, and the country is nearing the 400,000 death mark.
One in 860 Americans died from Covid-19 last year, according to new figures released by the CDC But the burden of deaths has not fallen equally across races, ethnicities and geographies, and we fears that vaccines will not reach the hardest-hit communities, where access to health services is limited and mistrust is rampant.
The new variant, called B 1.1.7, was first identified in Britain, where it quickly became the main source of infections, accounting for up to 60% of new cases diagnosed in London and the surrounding area .
It has since been detected in at least 30 countries, including the United States and Canada. In the United States, it represents less than 0.5% of cases, based on analysis of a limited number of samples.
Other variants circulating in South Africa and Brazil are also believed to be more contagious, but have not yet been identified in the United States. Japanese authorities said this month that they had detected one of the variants in four passengers from Brazil.
The CDC had announced earlier that from January 26, all air passengers arriving in the United States, regardless of their vaccination status, would be required to show proof of a negative result of a test for the coronavirus. or recovery from Covid.
In the new report, scientists at the CDC modeled how quickly the variant could spread in the United States, assuming that about 10-30% of people have pre-existing immunity to the virus, and another million people will be vaccinated weekly from this month. .
If the variant is around 50% more contagious, as British data suggests, it will become the predominant source of all infections in the United States by March, according to the model. A slow roll-out of vaccinations will accelerate this fate.
The variant differs by about 20 mutations from previous versions of the virus, of which at least two mutations may contribute to its greater contagiousness. As of Jan. 13, it had been detected in 76 cases from 12 states, but the actual numbers are likely much higher, Dr Butler said. “The CDC expects these numbers to increase in the coming weeks,” he said.
National and local laboratories have pledged to sequence around 6,000 samples per week, a goal the agency expects to achieve in about three weeks.
Agency officials also warned that standard tests for the virus could miss one of the genes altered in the new variant. This shouldn’t be a problem for most lab tests, they said, but some antigen tests can produce “false negatives,” missing infection cases.
“So far we haven’t found any evidence of this, but we are looking at it more closely,” Dr Butler said.
It is not yet clear what makes the newer variants more contagious. They share at least one mutation, called N501Y, which is believed to be involved. One possibility, the researchers said, is that the mutation may increase the amount of virus in the nose but not in the lungs – potentially explaining why it’s more contagious, but not more deadly.
A greater amount of virus in the nose means that anyone infected would expel more virus when speaking, singing, coughing or even breathing, said Trevor Bedford, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
“It makes the same situations that are spreading now – people living in the same household, these kinds of unventilated indoor contacts – more likely to spread,” he said.
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