“I would not be surprised if it is already here,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a professor of infectious diseases at the UCSF School of Medicine, said referring to the new coronavirus variant.
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He says unlike the UK, the United States has not done much genomic testing on positive COVID-19 samples to detect emerging variants.
“Mainly because we have so many numbers,” Chin-Hong said.
According to the CDC, out of 17 million positive cases, only 51,000 have followed since the pandemic began. By comparison, the CDC says the UK has evaluated at least 125,000 samples.
“Given the small fraction of U.S. infections that are consecutive, the variant may already be in the United States without being detected,” reads a report on the CDC website.
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Known as the VOC 202012/01 variant, it has become a prominent tribe in England.
Due to the rapid spread, Chin-Hong says, it is speculated that it may be more contagious than the dominant strain in the US, but this has not yet been determined on a biological basis.
“We really did not confirm that it is more communicable through laboratory experiments,” Chin-Hong said.
He says the data does show that the variant does not appear to be more deadly. He also does not believe that it will evade protection by the vaccines that have already been developed.
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“It takes years for some viruses like COVID to mutate significantly so a vaccine will not work,” he said.
The CDC has introduced a travel restriction for anyone coming to the UK for the past 14 days. A negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours must be offered to board a flight. The policy begins December 28th.
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