CALIFORNIA IDENTIFIES A CASE OF HIGHLY INFECTIOUS CORONAVIRUS VARIANT FIRST SEEN IN U.K.

Thu 31 December 2020:

The new highly contagious coronavirus strain from the U.K. has spread to Southern California, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Wednesday.

He made the statement during an online conversation about the pandemic with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, but Newsom offered little additional information about the circumstances of the diagnosis.

Newsom announced his state’s first known case of the coronavirus variant B.1.1.7, identified in Southern California, at the start of an online discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with leading infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Newsom did not immediately provide further details, but Fauci said he was “not surprised,” adding that additional cases of the variant would likely surface in California and other states.

The first U.S. case of the so-called UK variant of the virus, believed by scientists to be more contagious than others previously identified but no more severe in symptoms it causes, was announced by Colorado Governor Jared Polis on Tuesday.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Polis described the patient infected in his state as a National Guard soldier in his 20s who had been assigned to help deal with a COVID outbreak at a nursing home in semi-rural Elbert County, on the outskirts of the Denver metropolitan area.

The director Colorado’s Public Health and Environment Department told reporters that a second member of the National Guard may also have contracted the UK variant, though the state was still awaiting final laboratory confirmation.

The first case of the coronavirus variant in the U.S. was detected in Colorado on Tuesday. Experts have said it spreads faster than the common strain.

Fauci said he wasn’t surprised by reports of the latest case and suggested there are likely others in California and other states due to international travel.

“I don’t think that Californians should feel that this is something odd. This is something that’s expected,” Fauci said. He added there is “no indication that it increases the virulence” of the infection any more than the variant that has been present in the U.S. since February. Nor is there any evidence it can evade “the protection that’s afforded by the antibodies that are induced by vaccines.”

British scientists identified the variant publicly earlier this month, and it has now spread in the U.K. and to other countries.

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