Daily US Times: California announced the nation’s second confirmed case of the new coronavirus variant on Wednesday, offering a strong indication that the more contagious variant is spreading more widely in the United States.
Governor of the state, Gavin Newsom, announced the infection found in Southern California during an online conversation with top US infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“I don’t think Californians should think that this is odd. It’s to be expected,” Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said.
Gov. Newsom did not provide any details about the person who was infected.
The announcement came 24 hours after word of the first reported US variant infection, which emerged in Colorado. That person was identified on Wednesday as a Colorado National Guardsman who had been sent to help out at a nursing home struggling with the Covid-19 outbreak. Health officials said a second Guard member may have the new coronavirus variant too.
The cases triggered a host of questions about how the new variant is circulating in the UK arrived in the US and whether it is too late to stop it now, with top experts saying it is probably already spreading elsewhere in the United States.
Dr. Eric Topol, head of Scripps Research Translational Institute, warned: “The virus is becoming more fit, and we’re like a deer in the headlights.”
He noted that the United States does far less genetic sequencing of the coronavirus samples to discover variants than other developed nations, and thus was probably slow to detect this new mutation.
You may read: Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine approved for use in UK
