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The new strain of coronavirus has been discovered in Canada, as public health leaders warn that the United States may not have detected the most infectious variant.
Two cases of the Sars-Cov-2 variant sequenced for the first time in the United Kingdom were identified in Canada on Saturday, after it was found in countries in Europe, Japan and Australia. The Canadian patients had not traveled to the UK, so the new strain is likely spreading in the community.
Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario’s associate medical director for health, said the discovery “further reinforces the need for Ontarians to stay home as much as possible,” as the Canadian province began a shutdown on Saturday. .
The new strain, which some scientists fear may be up to 70 percent more transmittable, has yet to be discovered in the US, prompting the Trump administration to require that visitors from the UK be tested at starting Monday.
But the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the country did not perform enough genetic sequencing of the virus to make sure it was not circulating.
“Given the small fraction of US infections that have been sequenced, the variant could already be in the United States undetected,” the agency said on its website.
The United States alone has sequenced the virus that infected about 51,000 cases of the 17 million people who tested positive for Covid-19, the CDC said. By contrast, the UK carried out much more extensive genomic surveillance, sequencing nearly 10 percent of all positive tests, according to the latest analysis by the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium, which used data up to mid-November.
Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Georgetown University, said the travel restrictions were “too little, too late.”
“This variant is probably already here and we have not detected it yet,” he tweeted. “Why? The sorry state of genomic surveillance in the United States. This is a major weakness that we must correct.”
The new variant of the virus appeared in Kent, in the south-east of England, in late September. For the week ending December 9, it accounted for 62 percent of infections in London.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s leading infectious disease physician, said mutations were always “worrisome,” but tried to reassure the American public by saying there was no evidence that it appeared to lead to a more serious disease. .
“The other problem is that, does it escape the protection induced by the vaccines we are currently using? And according to our British colleagues, that does not appear to be the case, “he told CNN. State of the union on Sunday.
