UK variant now dominant form of COVID in U.S., CDC director says

U.K. COVID-19 Variant Causes, ‘More Severe Illness,’, Study Says.A new study published in the journal ‘Nature’has found that the U.K. COVID-19 variant is not onlymore transmissible but more deadly.The study took a look at data from almost5,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.K. andfound that two-thirds of those deaths wereconfirmed to have the variant, B.1.1.7. .Those infected with B.1.1.7. were at a 55 percent higher risk of dying within 28 days of testing positive for COVID-19. .Another recently published study foundsimilar results; people who tested positivefor B.1.1.7. in a community setting weremore likely to die within 28 days.Thankfully, the COVID-19 vaccines appearto be highly effective against B.1.1.7., makingfast vaccine rollout even more vital. .B.1.1.7. was first detected inthe U.K. last fall and sparkedthe country’s second wave ofinfection in the winter.The U.K. experienced a devastatingly highnumber of deaths, leaving them with the secondmost COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 in the world. .With B.1.1.7. already having spread across the globe and evenexpected to become the dominant strain in the United States, leadauthor Nick Davies hopes his study can “serve as a warning.” .The B.1.1.7 variant is more transmissible, andour research provides strong evidence that is alsocauses more severe illness. This should serve asa warning to other countries that they need toremain vigilant against B.1.1.7, which has alreadyspread to over 90 countries worldwide, Nick Davies, via ‘Forbes’

The head of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the coronavirus’ U.K. variant is now the dominant form of COVID-19 in the U.S.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky reportedly made the observation during a White House coronavirus team meeting.

Walensky said the strain, formally known as B.1.1.7, is “now the most common lineage circulating in United States.”

The strain has been shown to be more transmissible and infectious among younger Americans, which Walensky says contributed to rising case counts in recent weeks.

Walensky says new outbreaks have been tied to youth sports and day care centers. She particularly encouraged states with rising caseloads to curtail or suspend youth sports activities to slow the spread of the virus.

The U.S. leads the world with 30.8 million confirmed cases and more than 556,000 confirmed deaths.

A possibly worrisome variant of the coronavirus first identified in India — so new that it has no official name — has been found in California by scientists at Stanford University, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Nicknamed the “double mutant” variant by the BBC and others, the variant is sparking concern among some scientists because it contains not just one, but two worrisome mutations in its genetic composition that have been identified among other variants of concern being tracked by the CDC.

“We don’t know how those two mutations behave when they’re paired together,” Dr. Benjamin Pinsky, director of the Clinical Virology Laboratory at Stanford, said in an interview Monday.

The existence of the newly discovered variant was first disclosed by India’s government on March 24, Pinsky said, after a surge of coronavirus cases was detected in the nation’s second-most populous state, Maharashtra, whose largest city is Mumbai. The new variant is responsible for roughly 15% to 20% of new coronavirus cases there.

A day later, on March 25, the Stanford lab identified the same variant in a coronavirus sample taken from a patient in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“On the 25th, we actually got our sequence back and found that, ‘Wow, this is actually the same variant that they’re talking about,’” Pinsky said. “So this rapid spread across the globe is pretty impressive and also a bit concerning.”

None of the other variants being monitored by federal officials have the same combination of these two mutations, known as L452R and E484Q, the latter of which is closely related to a more well-known mutation known as E484K.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.