The highly contagious variant of COVID-19 first found in the UK has now been identified in every US state and has been circulating in the US since October. More than 15,000 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant have been reported in the US. The variant could be more deadly than the original type COVID-19, experts warn.
In the UK, scientists discovered the B.1.1.7 variant in early December.
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“By the time we learned of the British variant in December, it had quietly spread around the world,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the COVID-19 Model Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin and a professor of integrative biology, said. “We estimate that the B117 variant probably arrived in the US in October 2020, two months before we knew it existed.”
Scientists recently analyzed data from 15 countries to estimate the likelihood of visitors from the UK spreading the variant. As a result, the virus was reported in all 15 countries by mid-November.
“This study highlights the importance of laboratory monitoring,” Meyers said. “Rapid and comprehensive sequencing of virus samples is critical for the early detection and detection of new variants.”
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