The mutated Covid-19 variant has not been found in the United States but it could already be circulating in the country undetected, according to the Centres for Disease Control.
In an update on the variant known as VUI 202012/01, the CDC said sequencing efforts have not identified the virus mutation but that travel between the United Kingdom and the US made it likely it has already arrived or could soon be imported.
“Although viruses have only been sequenced from about 51,000 of the 17 million US cases, given the small fraction of US infections that have been sequenced, the variant could already be in the United States without having been detected,» the CDC said in an update posted to its website.
It comes amid calls to shut down travel between the two countries as borders close between the UK and other parts of the world.
While New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has called for a ban on travel, or suggested compulsory testing of passengers from across the pond coming into JFK airport, the US has not issued a blanket embargo on UK travellers as of Tuesday morning.
Mr Cuomo said he believed “intuitively” the variant was already in the US, and if it wasn’t already here it was on its way.
«That variant is getting on a plane and landing in JFK, and all it takes is one person,» Mr Cuomo said in a statement.
More than a dozen countries have banned travel from the UK, including Canada, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Russia, Turkey, Argentina, and much of Europe.
From Tuesday, British Airways requires travellers from the UK to the US to show a negative Covid test before departure.
While Delta and Virgin Atlantic are in similar discussions to do the same, the CDC has not made any recommendations on limiting travel.
The Trump administration’s assistant secretary for health, Admiral Brett Giroir, said in an interview with CNN that there was not current recommendation for a travel ban but that the CDC was monitoring the situation.
«Every hour we get more information,» he said. «So I think everything is possible. We just need to put everything on the table, have an open scientific discussion and make a best recommendation.»
While the CDC did not mention a travel ban in its latest update, the agency said in a statement to The Washington Post that it was “actively assessing” whether or not to impose restrictions.
“CDC is following the situation closely and actively assessing the implications of the new variant and response options with respect to international travel,” the agency said in a statement.
The variant was first detected in September, giving the virus about three months of opportunity to travel between the two countries, according to Mr Giroir.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the White House coronavirus task force’s infectious disease expert, said the new variant “very well might be here for all we know”.
“That’s why we have a system to do surveillance,” he said.
The CDC launched a surveillance programme to increase the number of virus variants to be detected, but it won’t be fully implemented until January.
Of the 275,000 full-genome sequences currently in public databases, 51,000 are from the United States while the UK currently has the most sequences at 125,000, which is why experts believe the variant was detected in the country but may not have originated there.
While considered to be more contagious, the CDC says there is no current evidence that it is more deadly while it would likely need multiple variations before it gained the ability to evade vaccine-induced immunity
The CEO of BioNTech, Ugur Sahin, said he’s confident the Covid-19 vaccine would work against the new variant, given that its proteins were 99 per cent same as the prevailing strains, but that further study was needed, according to Reuters.
“We don’t know at the moment if our vaccine is also able to provide protection against this new variant … But scientifically, it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine also can deal with the new virus variants,” Mr Sahin said at a news conference.
“But we will know it only if the experiment is done and we will need about two weeks from now to get the data. The likelihood that our vaccine works … is relatively high.”
