LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The highly infectious variant of coronavirus originally discovered in Britain has been detected in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday, a day after the first known case in the United States was documented in Colorado.
Newsom announced the first known case of its state of the coronavirus variant B.1.1.7, identified in Southern California, at the beginning of an online discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with Dr. Anthony Fauci, specialist in infectious diseases.
Newsom did not immediately provide further details, but Fauci said he was not “surprised,” adding that additional cases of the variant would likely appear in California and other states.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Tuesday announced the first U.S. case of the so-called British variant of the virus, which scientists believed was more contagious than others previously identified, but had no more severe symptoms.
At a news conference Wednesday, Polis described the infected patient in his state as a National Guard soldier in his twenties who had been assigned to help deal with an outbreak of COVID in a nursing home in the US. Elbert Semi-Rural County, on the outskirts of the Denver Metropolitan Area.
The Colorado director of the Department of Public Health and Environment told reporters that a second member of the National Guard could also have hired the UK variant, although the state was still awaiting final confirmation from the lab.
The new variant has also been detected in several European countries, as well as in Canada, Australia, India, South Korea and Japan, among others.
Although experts believe that recently approved COVID vaccines will be effective against the British variant, the emergence of a more highly transmissible strain of the virus may make the rapid development of vaccine vaccines even more critical.
The U.S. government on Monday began demanding that all airline passengers arriving from Britain, including U.S. citizens, give a negative COVID-19 within 72 hours of departure.
The government could extend coronavirus testing requirements for international air travelers beyond Britain as early as next week, sources informed of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.
Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reports from Rich McKay in Atlanta and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler and Grant McCool