(Newser)
– The British variant of coronavirus may not be the only new strain to worry about. The White House coronavirus working group has informed the United States that the U.S. could have its new strain that is 50% more transmissible. This would partly explain the current increase in cases, the working group said; the rate of new infections is almost double that of last spring and summer, CNBC reports. “This acceleration suggests that there may be a U.S. variant that has evolved here, in addition to the UK variant that is already spreading to our communities,” the report said. “Aggressive mitigation should be used to match a more aggressive virus.”
The CDC has reported at least 52 cases of the UK variant in the US. “I would be surprised if this doesn’t grow quickly,” the director of the National Institutes of Health said Washington Post. A CDC official said, “We definitely take it seriously and assume, for now, that this variant is more transmissible.” Health experts still expect existing vaccines to work against all newly discovered variants. But the CDC report to states warned that “without a uniform implementation of effective (two- or three-layer, well-fitting) masking and strict social distancing, epidemics could quickly worsen as these variants spread and become predominant “. (Read more coronavirus stories.)