CDC headquarters in Atlanta
Elijah Nouvelage | Bloomberg via Getty Images
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday that a new strain of Covid-19 now circulating in the US could further highlight hospitals already overrun with coronavirus patients.
Health officials in Colorado announced on Tuesday that they discovered the first known case of the new and more contagious strain of the virus initially discovered in the United Kingdom. A second separate new species first identified in South Africa may also be circulating in the US as well, CDC officials said.
“As the variants spread faster, they can lead to more cases and put even more strain on our already stressed healthcare systems,” said Dr. Henry Walke, the agency’s Covid incident manager, on a conference call with reporters.
Walke said the available data suggests that the new variety spreads “more easily and more quickly than other species,” but it does not appear to cause more serious illness or an increased risk of death.
He noted that the person in Colorado infected with the new strain of the virus had no travel history, “suggesting that this variant has been passed from person to person in the United States.” He added that given the wide distribution of the variant in the UK, its arrival in the US “was expected”.
“Viruses are constantly changing through mutation and we expect new variants to emerge over time,” he said. “Many mutations lead to variants that do not change how the virus infects humans. However, sometimes variants arise that can spread more easily, such as this one.”
He added that “experts believe our current vaccines will be effective against” both new strains. Scientists are still studying how the new strains respond to Covid-19 treatments such as monoclonal antibodies and restorative plasma.
Dr. Greg Armstrong, director of the CDC’s Office of Advanced Molecular Detection, said the claim that the vaccines will be effective against the new variant is based on “experience with similar previous mutations.” He added that immunity induced by a previous infection from another strain is likely to be effective against these new strains as well.
National and state laboratories across the country are conducting tests to determine if there are other variants in the US and how widely the variant discovered in the UK is spreading. He said the CDC is stepping up the national surveillance program so that it receives 750 samples per week for sequencing.
He added that the agency contracts with academic centers across the country to sequence samples and search for new variants locally. Those centers, he said, are located in Boston, New Haven, Connecticut, Athens, Georgia, Nashville, Tennessee, Madison, Wisconsin, and the Scripps Institute in San Diego.
“There are many labs that have this capability in the US,” he said of testing the new variant. “A lot of them are currently looking for this variant.”