The lack of Covid testing capability in the United States could mean that the new highly transmissible coronavirus strain that emerged in the United Kingdom is already making its way through U.S. communities.
This is according to Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, the medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit at Boston Medical Center.
“To find this strain, all we have to do is take a percentage of the diagnosed samples and do deep genetic analysis, and (In) in the US, our capacity has not been spectacular, ”the infectious disease doctor said “The News with Shepard Smith” Monday. “If the stump is here, we may miss it because the holes in the net are too wide.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the new variant has not been detected in the US
However, the agency said only about 51,000 of the 17 million infections in the country have been sequenced. The UK recorded more sequences with 125.00. Infections in the UK reached the second highest daily total on Christmas night, and the country confirmed 39,036 new cases of Covid-19 that day.
Starting Monday, the United States will require all travelers flying from the UK to prove negative for Covid-19 amid growing concerns about the new variant of the virus.
Dr. Bhadelia, who is also a medical contributor to NBC News, explained that the measures did not go far enough.
“You can still have negative people when they tested, get on the plane and be positive later, so I think the tests need to be related to some kind of quarantine,” he said.
Japan has taken stricter measures and stopped all foreign domestic arrivals. More than a dozen countries have reported rapidly spreading mutations, including Canada, France, South Africa, Australia, Japan and South Korea.
Health experts in the United Kingdom and the United States noted that while the new variant appears to be more transmissible, there is still no evidence that it is more deadly. Dr. Bhadelia warned that the findings should not please people when it comes to the new strain.
“The problem is that while we don’t believe mortality will increase, the fact that it can be transmitted more easily is also worrying because the more people get infected, the more people end up in hospitals, and potentially die,” he added.