A man from Colorado has become the first person in the United States to be infected with the new ‘most infectious’ variant of Covid-19 discovered in the United Kingdom. What’s scary is that the man has no recent travel history, according to health officials cited in an Associated Press report.
The discovery of the new strain in Colorado has raised a number of questions about how it got there, since the infected man had not been traveling. Colorado officials are likely to provide more details on the matter today. The man in his 20s belongs to a mostly rural area of rolling plains on the edge of the Denver metro area. His infection has baffled the authorities because the variant got there.
New diffusion variant
As the situation stands, the variant is likely to remain rare in the US, but the lack of travel history in the former case is a clear sign that the new strain is spreading. Scientists believe that the new strain is spreading in different parts due to people traveling through the UK in November and December.
Scientist Trevor Bedford, who studies the spread of Covid-19 at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, told the AP that he is “concerned” that there will be another spring wave due to the variant.
“It’s a race with the vaccine, but now the virus has gotten a little bit faster,” he added.
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The infected man has been kept in isolation in southeast Denver in Elbert County, state health officials said. Elbert County is also a rural area of rolling plains, located at the far end of the Denver metro area.
Meanwhile, a local website reported that there is a second suspected case of the variant in the state. Dwayne Smith, Elbert County Public Health Director, was quoted by Colorado Politics.
Scientists have said that the new mutant strain spreads faster and is more transmissible than the previous variant of the virus.
Currently, public health officials are investigating other potential cases and conducting contact tracing to determine the spread of the new variant throughout the state.
Dozens of countries have banned flights from the UK in the past week after England came under a strict lockdown. The new strain has now been discovered in many countries around the world, including India, which now has exactly 20 cases of the new Covid-19 strain.
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