The White House Coronavirus Task Force warned in a report this week that a rapid increase in cases this winter could be the result of a domestic variation of the virus, separate from the British variant.
“This fall / winter boom was almost twice the increase in cases like spring and summer,” the task force wrote in its weekly report, obtained by The Hill.
“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 and is 50% more transferable,” the report reads.
“Aggressive mitigation should be used to suit a more aggressive virus; without uniform implementation of effective face masking (two or three layers and well-fitting) and strict social distance, epidemics can quickly worsen as these variants become widespread and predominant, ”he continued.
The report does not say that there is hard evidence of a new strain of the virus, but that cases are increasing so rapidly that it may indicate a more contagious strain in the United States. The United Kingdom has been hit hard by a new, more contagious strain that has been discovered there and has already been detected in several US states.
“It’s not really the fact that we’ve discovered another variant here in the United States,” Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner for food and drug administration, told CNBC on Friday when asked about the report.
“It’s largely pattern recognition where we fit our curve on top of the UK curve, and at the moment the path that follows here in the United States looks a lot like what followed in the United Kingdom,” he added.
The British strain of the virus has so far been considered more contagious, but not more deadly. It is also not thought to be resistant to vaccines, although research continues.
The US has regularly set new records for daily infections and deaths due to the virus over the past few weeks as the country struggles to get the pandemic under control.
Johns Hopkins University reported that there were 4,085 coronavirus deaths in the U.S. on Thursday, the first time the country has surpassed 4,000 deaths in one day.
The deployment of approved vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna has been hampered by confusion over distribution, as officials try to pinpoint who should get the shots first and how to administer them quickly without wasting doses.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to date, approximately 6 million out of approximately 21 million doses have been administered. The Trump administration encourages states to expand the categories of people eligible for the vaccine dose, to speed up the process and ensure that strict criteria do not delay it.
In its report this week, the task force called on states not to delay the vaccination of people over the age of 65 or people at higher risk for serious complications due to the virus.
“The messages should focus on proactive testing of those under 40 to prevent asymptomatic spread to their domestic members, and on a call for action for immediate testing and rapid infusion of monoclonal antibodies for those at risk for serious diseases,” he said. reads the report. “In every hospital, infusion sites must be immediately available to save lives.”
Asked about the report on Friday, the CDC said there was a “great possibility” that variants existed in the United States, but it would take time to determine if there was a single variant that fueled the upsurge such as in the United Kingdom. variant has been identified so far.
“Based on scientific understanding of viruses, there are likely to be many variants evolving simultaneously around the world,” a CDC spokesman said. “There is also a strong possibility that there are variations in the United States, but it may [take] weeks or months to determine if there is a single variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 to fuel the boom in the United States, similar to the boom in the United Kingdom. “
“Researchers have been monitoring U.S. tribes since the start of the pandemic, including 5,700 specimens collected in November and December,” the spokesman added. To date, neither researchers nor CDC analysts have seen the emergence of a particular variant in the United States as seen with the rise of B.1.1.7 in the United Kingdom or B.1.351 in South Africa. “