“I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s already there,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a professor of infectious diseases at UCSF School of Medicine, referring to the new coronavirus variant.
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He says the United States, unlike the UK, has not performed many genomic tests on positive COVID-19 samples to track emerging variants.
“Mainly because we have so many songs,” said Chin-Hong.
The CDC says of the 17 million positive cases, only 51,000 have been sequenced since the start of the pandemic. In comparison, the CDC says the UK has sequenced at least 125,000 samples.
“Given the small proportion of sequenced US infections, the variant could already be in the United States without being detected,” says a report on the CDC website.
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Known as the VOC 202012/01 variant, it has become a prominent species in England.
Given its rapid spread, Chin-Hong says there is speculation that it may be more contagious than the dominant species in the US, but that has not yet been established on a biological basis.
“We really haven’t confirmed it’s more transferable through laboratory experiments,” said Chin-Hong.
He says the data shows that the variant has not turned out to be more deadly. Nor does he believe it will evade the protection afforded by the vaccines that have already been developed.
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“It actually takes years for a virus like COVID to mutate significantly so that a vaccine wouldn’t work,” he said.
The CDC has imposed a travel restriction on anyone coming to the United States who has been in the UK for the past 14 days. A negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours must be presented to board an inbound flight. The policy begins on December 28.
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