Daily US Times: The United States has reported its first case of the highly-infectious variant of Covid-19 that emerged in the UK. The US case has been confirmed in the state of Colorado.
The patient is a man in his 20s with no recent travel history and is currently in isolation.
Health officials in Colorado said they were working to identify contacts and other potential cases of the new variant.
It came as President-elect Joe Biden criticised the Trump administration’s distribution of Covid-19 vaccines.
Mr Biden said the programme was falling behind schedule.
The US has recorded more than 19 million Covid-19 infections and more than 337,000 deaths, the highest figures in the world.
The new highly-infectious variant is considerably more transmissible than previous ones but not necessarily any more dangerous for those infected, experts say.
Last week, US health officials said that they believed it was already in circulation in the country.
Colorado governor Jared Polis said in a statement on Tuesday that the infected patient was in isolation in Elbert County near Denver.
He said, public health officials were carrying out “a thorough investigation” and no infections had been discovered among close contacts so far.
Cases of the new coronavirus variant have been appearing across the world. The first two known infections of the new variant on the North American continent came to light in Canada at the weekend.
Two Covid-19 vaccines – one by Pfizer and one by Moderna – are currently being distributed and administered across the US.
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