CDC Headquarters in Atlanta
Elijah Nouvelage | Bloomberg via Getty Images
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that a new strain of Covid-19 now circulating in the United States could stress hospitals that are already overflowing with coronavirus patients.
Colorado health officials announced Tuesday that they have detected the first known case of the new and most contagious strain of the virus that was initially discovered in the UK. A second new strain first identified in South Africa could also be circulating in the United States as well, CDC officials said.
“Because variants are spreading faster, they could lead to more cases and put even more pressure on our health systems, which are already heavily loaded,” said Dr. Henry Walke, incident manager at Covid. in a conference call with journalists.
Walke said available data indicates the new variant is spreading “more easily and quickly than other strains,” but does not appear to cause more serious illness or increase the risk of death.
He noted that the Colorado individual who was infected with the new strain of the virus had no history of travel, which “suggests that this variant has been transmitted from person to person in the United States.” He added that, given the spread of the variant in the UK, “it was expected to arrive in the US”.
“Viruses are constantly changing through mutation and we expect new variants to appear over time,” he said. “Many mutations lead to variants that do not change the way the virus infects people. Sometimes, however, variants appear that can spread more easily, such as these.”
He added that “experts believe our current vaccines will be effective against” the two new strains. Scientists are still studying how new strains respond to Covid-19 treatments such as monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma.
Dr. Greg Armstrong, director of the CDC’s Office of Advanced Molecular Detection, said the claim that vaccines will be effective against the new variant is based on “experience with similar previous mutations.” He added that immunity induced by previous infection by a different strain is also likely to be effective against these new strains.
National and state laboratories across the country are conducting tests to determine if there are other variants present in the United States and the spread of the variant that was discovered in the United Kingdom. He said the CDC is increasing the national surveillance program so it will receive 750 samples a week to sequence them.
He added that the agency is contracting with academic centers across the country to sequence samples and look for new variants locally. He said these centers are located in Boston, New Haven, Connecticut, Athens, Georgia, Nashville, Tennessee, Madison, Wisconsin and the Scripps Institute in San Diego.
“There are a lot of labs that have that capacity in the United States,” he said about testing the new variant. “A lot of them are looking for that variant right now.”