US reports its first known case of new UK Covid variant

A Colorado man in his 20s working as a national guard member supporting a care home has become the first known US case of the newly identified strain of Covid-19 circulating in the UK – while a second case is suspected in another guard member, health officials said on Wednesday.

The new variant is thought to be more contagious than other, established variants and has prompted some countries to restrict travel from the UK. Public health experts believe that this variant is already spreading throughout the US.

The Colorado man confirmed to have contracted the new variant, called B.1.1.7, had no travel history, according to the state’s health department. In a statement on Tuesday, Governor Jared Polis said that health officials are conducting an investigation into how the man might have contracted the virus, while he recovers in isolation.

At a Wednesday press conference, Dr Rachel Herlihy, state epidemiologist for Colorado’s health department, said both the confirmed and possible cases were Colorado national guard personnel who were supporting staffing at a care home in Elbert county.

They started working at the facility on 23 December. The nursing home has been roiled by an “ongoing outbreak” of coronavirus, she said. “We do not have evidence that the variant virus is circulating in that facility,” she said of preliminary testing.

Related: What is the new Covid strain – and will vaccines work against it?

Although the new variant had not been found in the US until now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that it was probably already circulating through the country. The agency said while the new variant had not been identified through sequencing efforts “labs have only 51,000 of the 17m US cases” – and the variant might not have been picked up.

Dwayne Smith, Elbert county’s public health director, remarked to Colorado Politics: “This is a fluid situation” and that state health authorities were conducting contact tracing.

“Ongoing travel between the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the high prevalence of this variant among current UK infections, increase the likelihood of importation,” the CDC said in a statement. “Given the small fraction of US infections that have been sequenced, the variant could already be in the United States without having been detected.”

Detection of this new variant in the US comes as Covid-19 continues to spread seemingly unabated. There have been 19,516,147 confirmed cases in the US and 338,656 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Among the recent deaths is Luke Letlow, Louisiana’s incoming Republican congressional representative. Letlow, who reportedly did not have pre-existing conditions, died from coronavirus-related complications at 41 years old, his spokesman said in a statement.

Public health experts have repeatedly warned that the US pandemic is poised to get worse. Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, said Tuesday on CNN that Covid-19 has “gotten out of control in many respects” and was predicted to increase still more follow holiday travel. Fauci’s statements are in keeping with his prior warnings, which millions have repeatedly ignored.

“We’re in a very difficult situation,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, remarked. “We never got down to a low baseline where you can actually control community spread by identification, isolation and contact tracing.”

The new variant has also recently been detected in at least 17 countries, including South Korea, Spain, Australia and Canada. On Christmas Day, the CDC issued new guidelines for travelers from the UK, requiring proof of a negative Covid-19 test.

That the Colorado man who tested positive for the new variant has no travel history is significant in that it suggests the new variant is already spreading through US communities, said Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert at Emory University, in a tweet.

“There is a lot we don’t know about this new Covid-19 variant, but scientists in the United Kingdom are warning the world that it is significantly more contagious,” Polis said in a statement. “We are working to prevent spread and contain the virus at all levels.”

Experts say that the coronavirus vaccines currently being distributed are likely to still work to protect people against the new variant. Scientists believe that although it is more contagious, it does not cause a more severe illness than other established variants. Research is still ongoing, however, and it remains uncertain whether the new variant is actually more transmissible due to a genetic advantage, or whether it is simply spreading so widely due to fluke superspreader events. A report from Public Health England found that the new variant was not linked to higher rates of hospitalization or death.

New variants of the coronavirus have been seen almost since the virus was first detected in China nearly a year ago. It is common for viruses to undergo minor changes as they reproduce and move through a population.

The US, unlike the UK, has not broadly and consistently been tracking genomic sequences of Covid-19 infections and has a less robust process for tracking viral mutations.

Related: How California went from a leader in the Covid fight to a state in despair

“The fact that Colorado has detected this variant first in the nation is a testament to the sophistication of Colorado’s response,” said Jill Hunsaker Ryan, the executive director of the state’s public health department, in a statement. “We are currently using all the tools available to protect public health and mitigate the spread of this variant.”

The US has recorded more coronavirus cases and deaths than any other country. Even as health workers, elderly people and other Americans start receiving their first doses of Moderna and Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccines, the rollout has been marked by delays, disorganization, and some allegations of misconduct, tampering the hope presented by these technologies.

President-elect Joe Biden slammed the Trump administration’s vaccination efforts on Tuesday, saying that distribution “is falling behind, far behind”.

“A few weeks ago the Trump administration suggested that 20m Americans could be vaccinated by the end of December,” Biden remarked, at a Covid-19 briefing in Wilmington, Delaware. “With only a few days left in December, we have only vaccinated a few million so far.”

In some parts of the country such as Los Angeles, hospitals have found themselves overwhelmed, forced to turn away ambulances. Officials have ramped up restrictions in an attempt to combat rising infection rates.

Stay-at-home orders for southern California and the San Joaquin Valley were broadened, with officials saying there wasn’t an established expiration date for these rules. ICU capacity rates will determine when these restrictions are loosened, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans are contending with the deep, ongoing economic fallout from coronavirus as significant relief efforts stall in Washington DC. On Tuesday, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, blocked a vote on $2,000 stimulus checks passed by the House – although the payment had been demanded by Trump and backed by some Republicans.

McConnell has included $2,000 payments in a new bill, which includes other items pushed by Trump – launching a commission to study 2020 election fraud, of which there is no evidence, and repealing section 230, which protects social media concerns from being sued over content posted by third-parties, per CBS.

The Associated Press contributed to this reporting