British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has plunged England into a new national lockdown until at least mid-February to combat the super-infectious mutant coronavirus that is already spreading across the United States.
Johnson today ordered people to stay at home again, as they were ordered to do so in the first wave of the pandemic in March, because the new virus variant was spreading in a ‘frustrating and alarming’ way.
Schools and non-essential businesses have also been ordered to close after the UK has battled an alarming surge in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, which officials have blamed on the mutation that is more contagious than existing variants.
The mutant strain currently plaguing the UK has already been detected in ten people across four states: New York, California, Colorado and Florida.
Health officials do not yet know how widespread the UK strain is in the US but some fear it could have started spreading back in October.
The US on Monday recorded 210,479 new cases and 1,394 additional fatalities as a result of COVID-19.
UK health authorities have recorded more than 50,000 new infections daily since passing that milestone for the first time on December 29. On Monday, the UK reported 407 virus-related deaths.
The UK currently has more cases and deaths per million people than the US.
New York Gov Andrew Cuomo announced on Monday that his state had found its first case of the more contagious UK strain, raising concerns about threats to hospital capacity should it spread rapidly in the former epicenter state.
He said a man in his 60s, who lives in a town north of Albany, was recovering from the new strain. The man had not traveled recently, which suggests community spread is taking place.
New York has carried out 5,000 tests for the new strain – and so far has only found the one case. Cuomo said it could be a ‘game changer’ if the new strain increases hospitalizations and forces regions to close down.
The first case of the UK strain was detected last week in a nursing home in a remote Colorado town where a National Guard member in his 20s, who had been assigned to help at the facility, tested positive.
The strain was then found in California and Florida before being detected in New York on Monday.
The discovery of the new variant led the CDC to issue new rules on Christmas Day for travelers arriving to the US from the UK, requiring they show proof of a negative COVID-19 test.
Scientists in the UK believe the variant is more contagious than previously identified strains.
The cases have triggered questions about how the version circulating in England arrived in the US and whether it is too late to stop it now, with top experts saying it is probably already spreading elsewhere in the country.
Health experts have warned that the new strain could have started spreading in the US as early as October.
Dr Ali Mokdad, of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics & Evaluation, said it was a ‘race against time’ to detect and stop the spread of the new variant – especially given the cases detected so far have not been linked to travel.
‘That means that somebody else in Colorado had introduced that mutation and that person got it. So that’s a little bit scary more than we expected because it means there’s a circulation of that virus already,’ he told King5.
‘In the United States we need to have a surveillance for the genetic typing of this virus, and we need to stay on top of it, not only in the United States but elsewhere as well.’
Dr Anthony Fauci has already said it was ‘inevitable’ that the UK strain would spread to the US.
‘Obviously, we don’t want to see a virus that has a greater capability of spreading,’ he told NBC’s Today.
‘The good news is that it does not appear to be… making people more sick and leading to more death. The other thing that is important and a favorable thing, it does not seem to evade the protection that’s afforded by vaccines that are currently being used.’