CDC Headquarters in Atlanta
Elijah Nouvelage | Bloomberg via Getty Images
Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that a new strain of Covid-19 now spreading in the U.S. could further stress hospitals already overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.
Colorado health officials announced Tuesday that they are locating the first known case in the U.S. of the new and more contagious strain of the virus initially discovered in the UK. A second separate new strain first identified in South Africa could also already be spreading in the US, CDC officials said.
“Because the variants spread faster, it can lead to more cases and put even more pressure on our healthcare systems, which are already heavily taxed,” said Dr. Henry Walke, the agency’s Covid incident manager, said during a conference with reporters.
Walke said the available data suggest the new variant “spreads easier and faster than other strains”, but does not appear to cause more serious illness or increased risk of death.
He noted that the individual in Colorado who was infected with the new strain of the virus did not have a travel history, which ‘suggests 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.
“Viruses are constantly changing through mutation and we expect new variants to emerge over time,” he said. “Many mutations lead to variants that do not change how the virus infects humans. Sometimes, however, variants arise that can spread more easily, such as these.”
He added that “experts believe that our current vaccines will be effective against” both the new strains. Scientists are still studying how the new strains respond to Covid-19 treatments such as monoclonal antibodies and recovery plasma.
Dr Greg Armstrong, director of the CDC’s Office of Advanced Molecular Detection, said the claim that the vaccines would be effective against the new variant was based on ‘experience with similar previous mutations’. He added that immunity caused by previous infection of another strain is also likely to be effective against these new strains.
National and state laboratories across the country are testing to determine if other variants occur in the US and how widely the variant discovered in the UK is widespread. He said the CDC is in the process of sharpening the national surveillance program so that it will receive 750 samples per week for sequencing.
He added that the agency is contracting with academic centers across the country to sequence samples and search for new variants locally. The centers, he said, are in Boston, New Haven, Connecticut, Athens, Georgia, Nashville, Tennessee, Madison, Wisconsin, and the Scripps Institute in San Diego.
“There are many laboratories that have this capacity in the US,” he said about testing the new variant. “Many of them are currently looking for this variant.”