A man receives a COVID-19 nasal swab test at Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) amid a coronavirus outbreak in Southern California on December 22, 2020 in Los Angeles, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
Three states in the US have now identified cases of the new coronavirus strain in people with no travel history, a sign that the variant could already unknowingly spread to Americans.
Health officials in Florida announced on Thursday that they have found the first case of Covid-19 in the state involving the new, more contagious variant of the virus. The man, who lives in the county just north of West Palm Beach, is in his 20s and has no travel history, the Florida Department of Health said in a statement. Twitter message.
The Florida man is one of the first handful of people with the new variant, known as B.1.1.7., First identified in the UK. California has now identified at least four cases of the new species in San Diego County among men with no reported travel history. The cases came just days after Colorado health officials discovered the first few cases in people who hadn’t traveled.
“I’m not surprised you have a case, and probably more cases, in California,” said White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, to Governor Gavin Newsom Wednesday after he announced health officials had found their first case. “We will likely see reports from other states.”
US health officials have said the arrival of the variant in the country is no surprise, although it could make the situation worse if it spreads out of control. While there is some evidence that the new strain is more easily and more rapidly transmitted compared to previous versions of the virus, it is not thought to cause more serious disease in people who are infected and current vaccines should still work against it, officials said. of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. at a conference call Wednesday.
Still, the new variant threatens to make things worse if more people are hospitalized as a result of the spread, experts said. December was the deadliest month of the US pandemic as hospitals reached capacity and the long-awaited vaccine roll-out slowed down.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the country reported more than 6.3 million new infections and more than 77,500 deaths in December. Heading into 2021, just over 125,000 people are currently being hospitalized with Covid-19 – more than double the highs reached in mid-April last year, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project, led by journalists at The Atlantic.
Another cause for concern: The first cases of the new variant have been found in the country’s most populous states amid a busy holiday travel season, Mercedes Carnethon, vice president of preventive medicine at Northwestern University, told MSNBC on Friday.
TSA officials said they screened 1.28 million passengers at US airports on Sunday after Christmas, the highest number since Covid retired from travel in mid-March.
“Based on the photos we all saw from TSA checkpoints during the vacation, we can be sure that millions of people traveled between these destinations,” Carnethon said. “We can be reasonably sure that this variety is now everywhere.”
Recent evidence from Imperial College London also shows that the new variant appears to affect people under 20 more than older adults. Part of that shift, however, could be that schools remained open during a period of lockdown orders, the study said.
The age difference can be an issue, as younger people are more likely to be present in the community as vital workers, and they aren’t the first to be vaccinated, Carnethon said.
“I think the priority in my opinion should be to reinforce the basic messages we know about how to stop community transmission,” Carnethon said. “As we are well aware, our vaccination strategy starts with strengthening our health worker infrastructure. However, this is not necessarily the population leading to the spread of the coronavirus in the community.”