The novel coronavirus variant originally discovered in the United Kingdom might have hit the United States back in October, according to new analysis.
What’s going on?
The Guardian reports the researchers recently analyzed more than 2 million COVID-19 tests to discover more about the U.K. variant.
- The researchers used genome sequencing to find “whether the variant observed in Americans is the same as the so-called B117 variant currently circulating in the U.K. is under way,” according to The Guardian.
- The researchers looked for the prevalence of the “S gene dropout” — which led to the mutation — in COVID-19 cases, and found there was a spike beginning on early October, according to The Guardian.
Eric Topol, head of Scripps Research Translational Institute but was not involved in the research, told The Guardian why the U.S. may have had the variant but didn’t notice it.
- “It wouldn’t be at all surprising if at least some of the cases were B117,” he said. “It has probably been here for a while at low levels — but you don’t see it until you look for it.”
What Dr. Fauci says
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Fauci said on “Good Morning America” back at the end of December that it is “certainly possible” that the U.K. strain has hit the U.S. already, which I wrote about for the Deseret News.
- “When you have this amount of spread within a place like the U.K., you really need to assume that it’s here already … it certainly is not the dominant strain but I would certainly not be surprised at all if it is already here.”