Colorado state health officials announced on Tuesday that they were America’s first confirmed case of a fast-growing COVID-19 variant first identified in the UK. The species, which is believed to be more contagious, has been linked to an increase in the number of cases in Great Britain and has also spread to several other countries around the world.
Colorado officials said the case had been identified by the state public health lab in a man in his 20s with no travel history. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have also been notified of the matter, according to state health officials.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is aware of Colorado’s report on the first US case related to the UK variant of COVID-19,” CDC spokesman Belsie González said in an email.
“In addition to the reported case in Colorado, we expect more cases to be discovered in the coming days,” González said.
Public and private laboratories across the country have stepped up sequencing efforts to search for the UK variant, dubbed B.1.1.7. Public health officials in the UK have warned that it appears to be more transmissible than other strains of COVID-19.
“The fact that Colorado was the first to discover this variant in the country is a testament to the sophistication of Colorado’s response and the talent of CDPHE’s scientists and laboratory operations,” said Jill Hunsaker Ryan, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Public health laboratories routinely identify variants of the coronavirus in COVID-19 patients, although many mutations of the virus do not affect its spread or the symptoms it causes.
Colorado health officials said they performed contact tracing of the individual case, although they added that the individual was “currently in isolation” and “has no close contacts so far.”
Monday has the Trump administration imposed a new requirement for travelers from the UK to test negative for COVID-19 before boarding flights to the US.
US health officials have repeatedly warned that the variant was likely already in circulation here, although public health laboratories had not yet identified cases. Unlike the UK, the US has only sequenced a small percentage of COVID-19 cases, so variants here are likely to escape detection.
As reports of the new British variant surfaced earlier this month, the CDC said only 51,000 of the 17 million cases of COVID-19 in the US had been sequenced.
Preliminary results published this week by researchers in the UK found that the COVID-19 variant appeared to be more transmissible, but not more deadly. It also does not appear to lead to more hospital admissions, nor to increase the risk of reinfection.
Both Pfizer and Moderna have said they believe their COVID-19 vaccines also protect against B.1.1.7., And say they have regularly tested their injections for new virus variants.