Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Two days before President-elect Joe Biden takes oath as the 46th US President, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned America that a new, more transmissible variant of the coronavirus, first discovered in the United Kingdom recently, could become the dominant circulating strain in the US by March 2021 with the onset of spring.
The new variant, which has infected more than 100 Indians and many others globally in recent weeks, has also been detected in 76 cases across 10 US states. The variant, known as B.1.1.7, is seen as twice as transmissible as the current version of the virus circulating in the US.
However, there is no evidence that it causes more severe illness or is transmitted differently to date, media reported.
Globally, COVID-19 has infected over 95 million people and claimed more than 2.04 million lives. In the USA, it infected over 24 million people and killed more than 400,000 during the last year.
In India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the world’s largest vaccination drive on January 16, the pandemic has infected over 10 million people and claimed more than 152,000 lives so far.
A rapid spread of the new British strain will increase the burden on health resources while infections are surging, further sapping strained healthcare resources and increasing the need for better adherence to mitigation strategies, such as social distancing and mask-wearing, the CDC said in its weekly report on death and disease, media reported.
It also increases the percentage of the population that needs to be vaccinated to achieve protective herd immunity to control the pandemic, the CDC said.
According to CDC scientists, however, the new variant is more widespread in the country than is currently reported.
On Friday last week, US President-elect Joe Biden nominated David Kessler, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as Chief Science Officer in the new administration’s efforts to boost the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, at a time when his team predicted the US would mark some 500,000 deaths from the pandemic by next month.
The Biden plan against COVID-19 calls for Congress to spend USD 20 billion on vaccine distribution. He is also targeting to get 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses injected into Americans in his first 100 days in office.
The Trump administration could give only 11.1 million shots as against the planned 20 million until Thursday last week, CDC data said.