- The extra-virgin British coronavirus variant is spreading rapidly in the US, according to a new study.
- The variant, B.1.1.7, doubles according to the new research every ten days in the US.
- The researchers urged the US to better monitor virus variants to avoid ‘devastating consequences’.
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The more contagious coronavirus variant that originated in the UK is spreading rapidly across the US, with cases doubling approximately every ten days, according to a study published on Sunday.
The study, which has not yet been through the peer review process, paints a bleak picture of how quickly the B.1.1.7 variant will dominate the U.S. coronavirus cases if left untreated.
“These findings show that B.1.1.7 is likely to become the dominant variant in many U.S. states by March 2021, leading to further increases in COVID-19 in the country, unless urgent mitigation efforts are implemented immediately,” the authors of wrote the report. .
The research, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, supports the CDC’s prediction late last month that B.1.1.7 will become the ‘predominant variant in March’. The report was compiled by researchers from various institutions and the laboratory testing company Helix.
According to the new research, the prevalence of the variant is growing nationally by about 7% per day, slightly slower than in European countries, including the United Kingdom, where the growth rate is 10.4% per day. The lower transmission rate can be explained by the limited available data or competition from other even more transmissible variants of the disease, the report said.
The new, more contagious tensions and the consequent increase in affairs led British officials to institute a closure, which is still ongoing. British officials have also warned that the variant may have a higher mortality rate than the original.
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Although the variant accounted for only about 3.6% of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. in the past week of January, it is spreading rapidly and is 35 to 45% more transmissible than other strains circulating across the country, the authors of the study.
They estimated that the variant doubles nationally every 12.2 days in California, every 9.1 days in Florida, and every 9.8 days.
Their research indicated that B.1.1.7 was introduced several times in the country, with the earliest in November 2020. They also said that periods of increasing international and domestic travel around Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day provided a “probable explanation” for how the variant entered the U.S. and spread domestically.
The emergence of the British variant, as well as another mutated strain from South Africa, has sparked controversy among American experts on infectious diseases over how to get the best people vaccinated, including the priority of second vaccines.
The researchers warned that there would be serious consequences if the US no longer bothered to follow up on emerging variants of the disease. But the British variant and other strains are still scarce enough that there is time to mitigate its effects, they wrote.
“Unless decisive and immediate state health action is taken, the increased transmission rate of these sex lines and the consequent higher effective reproduction rate of SARS-CoV-2 are likely to have devastating consequences for COVID-19 deaths and diseases in a few months,” the researchers said. writing.