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The White House task force Coronavirus shared a report with states, saying that a possible ‘US variant’ may be responsible for the coronavirus boom.
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According to the report, the American variant is more transmissible than the original virus, as are the strains reported in the United Kingdom and South Africa.
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But the CDC told Business Insider that there is no evidence of a ‘US variant’ and that it could take months to determine whether a single strain is an increase in the cause in cases.
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The White House Coronavirus task force sent a report on Sunday warning that there could be a “US variant” of the coronavirus. The report, according to the media that obtained the document, may have fueled the unprecedented number of cases and deaths in Coronavirus.
The report suggested that this US variant may be more transmissible than the original version of the virus that originated in China, just like the new strains found in the United Kingdom (B.1.1.7) and in South Africa. (B.1.351) has been identified.
But there is still no scientific evidence that a more contagious version of the coronavirus originated or began to spread in the US.
The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention said in a statement to Business Insider on Friday: “To date, neither researchers nor CDC analysts have seen the emergence of a specific variant in the United States as seen with the rise of B.C. 1.1.7 in the United Kingdom or B.1.351 in South Africa. “
Human behavior has a major impact on transmission speed
According to CNBC, the task force’s report provided little information on how long the new American tribe would possibly circulate, nor what mutations were included in its genetic profile.
Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told Closing Bell of CNBC that the task force’s hypothesis about the existence of a US variant is based in part on the fact that the US and UK’s growth curves for pandemic are similar.
According to CNN, the task force’s report said: “This fall / winter surge was nearly twice the increase in cases such as spring and summer rises. 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. “
Due to the lack of evidence provided by the task force, frustrated officials at the CDC tried to remove the statements about the alleged variant from the recent report, but according to the New York Times, it was unsuccessful.
Even in the UK, the variant is not the only reason for the strong increase in cases.
“Human behavior has a very large effect on transmission – probably much greater than any biological differences in SARS-CoV-2 variants,” Paul Bieniasz, a virologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, told Business Insider earlier.
The variant reported in the UK has an increased reproductive or R0 value – the average number of people infecting one sick person. The number is 1.5 rather than 1.1, the World Health Organization announced in December, meaning that 100 sick people will infect another 150 on average, not 110.
However, mitigation measures such as social distance and masking play a major role in the spread of the virus, regardless of its genetic mutations.
Read more: Young, healthy people have found a loophole to get the COVID vaccine without skipping the line
The US does not follow enough genome to detect new variants
To monitor the many versions of the coronavirus circulating worldwide – each separated by a handful of small changes in its genome – researchers are examining genetic samples of the virus and monitoring the changes over time. British researchers first identified B.1.1.7 in mid-September.
But the US leaves many countries behind when it comes to keeping new variants. U.S. researchers have genetically tracked less than 0.01% of coronavirus cases: 2.5 out of every 1,000. In total, the U.S. sequenced only 51,000 coronavirus samples, the CDC reported. In the UK, laboratories follow 45 out of every 1000 cases.
This is probably why the US missed the introduction of the British tribe, and also why it would be difficult to identify a new US variant. According to Charles Chiu, an expert in infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, the US reported its first case regarding B.1.1.7 by December 29th. It was at least three weeks after the tribe entered the country. .
So far, more than 50 cases of B.1.1.7 have been confirmed in six states, and all but one have had no travel history, indicating that the tension has been quietly spreading for some time.
“It’s very likely to be in every state,” Chiu told Business Insider earlier.
Even if a possible new US variant were indeed responsible for an increase, establishing a connection could take months.
“There is a high possibility that there are variants in the United States. However, it can take weeks or months to determine if there is a single variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 to trigger the boom in the United States. , similar to the boom in the UK, ”the CDC said in its statement to Business Insider.
Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, said in a tweet on Thursday that “there are probably similar homemade varieties in the US as well, but just no one is looking for.”
“Like everything in our national response to public health, we have added a little bit for genomic sequencing of viruses,” he added.
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