Dr. Anthony Fauci, said that the highly contagious new strain of COVID-19 is already widespread in the country more than is currently known.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said he would be ‘very surprised’ if the new variant, which first emerged in the UK, had not yet reached a number of states.
“I think it’s pretty clear that if it’s going to be places like California and New York and Colorado, it’s going to be in a number of states soon,” Fauci told Newsweek on Tuesday.
The new variant – which has been confirmed in at least five states – is thought to be about 70 percent more contagious than other strains.
“We take it very seriously. “If you have greater portability, you will get more business,” Fauci said.
‘If you get more cases, you get more hospitalizations. And if you get more hospitalizations, you end up getting more deaths. ”
But Fauci said he did not believe the new tension was the driving force behind recent training in cases across the country.
‘I do not think the British mutation [variant] was responsible for the considerable increase in cases in the United States, because the British variant is here, but it is not the dominant tension in the United States, ”Fauci said.