Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Brett Giroir said on Monday that a new, faster-spreading strain of the coronavirus first found in the UK is “likely” already present in the US, although he warned officials not yet have proof of his presence.
In an interview with “Good Morning America”, Giroir warned authorities suspect the new virus mutation has already made the leap from the UK to North America, despite the US and more than a dozen other countries having introduced travel restrictions.
“We have no evidence that it is here, but we suspect it is likely here given its global interconnectedness,” said Giroir. “We have no proof it’s here. It is certainly not widespread here, but we have to see if it is not there. ‘
“And we still believe – don’t have absolute proof – but we have very good evidence and a strong belief that the vaccines will still be effective,” Giroir added.
Giroir went on to say that while the new variant of COVID-19 is believed to be spreading faster, there is “no evidence that it is more serious” than the version that has been spreading in the US for months.
His comments matched those of former Food and Drug Administration chief Scott Gottlieb, who told CBS on Sunday in “Face the Nation” that the new variant of COVID-19 is “likely here in the United States” in a ” reasonable “number of people.
“We don’t sequence a lot of samples in this country, and a lot of that sequencing that is done is done in private labs and not aggregated into public databases. That needs to be resolved,” Gottlieb said of testing. problems that hindered American efforts to find the new species. “In the UK, they sequence about 10 percent of all samples. Here we do a fraction of 1 percent.”
Officials in Canada revealed on Saturday that they had discovered two cases of the new COVID-19 strain, occurring in a couple with no travel history or known exposure to the virus.
The US passed 19 million in total confirmed COVID-19 cases on Sunday, while more than 320,000 died from the virus nationwide.