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– The British variant of the coronavirus may not be the only new species that worries you. The White House Coronavirus Task Force said the US may have its own new strain that is 50% more transmissible. This will partially explain the current increase in business, the task force said; the rate of new infections is almost twice as high as last year and spring, reports CNBC. “This acceleration suggests that there may be an American variant that has developed here, in addition to the British variant that is already spreading in our communities,” the report reads. “Aggressive mitigation should be used to suit a more aggressive virus.”
The CDC has reported at least 52 cases of the British variant in the US. “I would be surprised if it does not grow fast,” said the director of the National Institutes of Health Washington Post. A CDC official said: ‘We are definitely taking this seriously, and we are now assuming that this variant is more communicable. ‘Health experts still expect the existing vaccines to work against all the newly discovered variants. But the CDC report to the states warned that “without uniform implementation of effective face masking (two or three layers and well-fitting) and strict social removal, epidemics can quickly worsen as these variants become widespread and predominant.” (Read more coronavirus stories.)