The U.S. discovered the first national soldier infected by the New Crown (Chinese communist virus) variant on Dec. 29 last year, when the British variant B.1.1.7, which had already swept through Europe, began to threaten the U.S. Meanwhile, other variants began to proliferate in the country, including the South African and Brazilian variants, which seemed to evade antibodies, and indigenous variants that appeared in Oregon, New York and California; scientists fear that the U.S. may Scientists are concerned that there is a race for variant viruses in the United States.
The timing could not have been worse for the U.S., with the post-holiday rush of diagnoses and delays in distribution of the new crown vaccine due to miscommunication and confusion. To this day, B.1.1.7 constitutes nearly three-quarters of the country’s confirmed cases, but scientists believe other variants have the potential to cause further trouble in the coming months.
The New York Times, under the headline “How the U.S. Is Beating the Variant Virus for Now,” quoted experts as analyzing a combination of reasons, including people wearing masks, keeping social distance, and perhaps the seasonal waning of the virus, plus the tens of millions of Americans who have been vaccinated. 1.7 viruses are even less resistant to vaccines.
“Honestly, I think we got lucky.” “The vaccine saved us,” said Nathan Grubaugh, an infectious disease expert at Yale University.
California researchers found in January that one variant of the virus had ten mutations that could not only evade antibody therapies that effectively treat New Coronavirus, but were also more infectious. The U.S. has significantly improved its surveillance capabilities for variant viruses in the following months, identifying more than 28,800 virus genomes in the past week alone, accounting for almost 10 percent of positive tests, which were then uploaded to the Global Initiative for Shared Influenza Data (GISAID) online database.
As a result, the California variant was less competitive, with the number of cases plummeting in February and March and continuing to be prevalent only in Northern California; as of April 24, it accounted for only 3.2 percent of virus samples tested nationwide, compared with 66 percent for B.1.1.7.
On the East Coast, researchers found in February that the rapidly spreading B.1.526 variant in New York State appeared to be a match for B.1.1.7, which accounted for about 35 percent of cases nationwide at the time, but B.1.1.7 has since taken over.
B.1.1.7 appears to have an advantage over almost all currently known variants of the virus, but the reason for this remains unclear; federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky said during a congressional hearing in May that B.1.1.7 currently accounts for up to 72 percent of the nation’s cases.
Experts caution, however, that while B.1.1.7 is more likely to spread, there is no difference in the route of transmission; epidemiologist Emma Hodcroft (Emma Hodcroft) said, “B.1.1.7 still can’t cross the masks, and we can still stop the virus from spreading.”
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