Government Jared Polis and officials announced that Denver and a number of other Colorado counties will move Tuesday on a newly refurbished version of the state-of-the-art COVID-19 slide at Boettcher Mansion in Denver, Colorado. 17 November 17 November, 2020.
Hyoung Chang | Denver Post | Getty Images
WASHINGTON – Colorado health officials said Wednesday they are investigating a possible second case of a new and possibly more contagious strain of Covid-19.
“There’s still a lot we do not know about this variant,” Colorado Governor Jared Polis said Wednesday, advising Coloradans to continue in the new year to comply with CDC guidelines.
On Tuesday, health officials in Colorado confirmed the country’s first case of the B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant.
The infected individual, a man in his twenties, has no history of travel and is in isolation with mild symptoms, officials said Tuesday.
The confirmed case as well as the second patient are both members of the Colorado National Guard. Both supported the Good Samaritan Society assistance facility in Simla, about an hour and a half south of Denver.
Officials said Wednesday that six members of the Colorado National Guard are working at the facility.
“Both of these cases are staff of the Colorado National Guard deployed to support staff in the nursing home of the Good Samaritan Society in Simla,” said Dr. Rachel Herlihy of the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment, the state’s top epidemiologist, explains.
She added that the individuals were tested at the state laboratory on Dec. 24, a routine measure for National Guard members working near Covid-19 patients or areas prone to outbreaks.
“Currently, we are investigating two possibilities for the way these individuals contracted their infections,” Herlihy said.
“Given the detection of the variant in Colorado, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services allowed us to temporarily interrupt visits to nursing homes so that the population could be vaccinated quickly,” Polis said.
“Not only is the health risk felt more sharply by older Coloradoans, but social isolation is a difficult and emotional piece that so many residents of nursing homes have faced,” he said, adding that the measure would benefit the older community of the state will protect.
Dr Emily Travanty, director of the laboratory services division at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said officials are currently analyzing 24 suspicious samples that may contain mutations. She explained that there was not enough data to link the additional 24 samples to the B.1.1.7 variant.
On a Wednesday call with reporters, dr. Henry Walke of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the new variant appears to be “spreading easier and faster than other strains.” Walke also said it does not appear to cause worse infections or an increased risk of death.
Walke said the Colorado individual infected with the new strain of the virus did not have a travel history, which “indicates that this variant was transmitted from person to person in the United States.”
He added that, given how widely the variant has spread in the UK, the expectation that it would come in the US.
Preliminary analysis of the new variant, first identified in the UK, suggests it may be the culprit behind Britain’s recent increase in business.
The CDC said in December that the new tribe could already be circulating in the US without notice. The CDC cited the ongoing journey between the UK and the US as an explanation for the possible arrival of the new variant.
Read more: UK to impose stricter restrictions on millions of people as Covid cases rise
The discovery of tensions in Britain has caused border closures in European countries such as Ireland, France, Belgium and Germany as well as countries outside the continent.
Last week, the British government confirmed that another contagious variant of the coronavirus identified in South Africa had also originated in the United Kingdom. The tension from South Africa has not yet been identified in the United States.