At least seven states have confirmed cases of the 70 percent more infectious variant, dubbed B117, though two have only confirmed their cases to the CDC and not announced them publicly. Detecting cases of the new B117 variant needs to be a top priority because 'if we don't know what's out there, we can't generate public health strategies to combat them,' Pitts added. Genome sequencing is a time-consuming process, requiring about 44 hours at minimum. With more than 200,000 people testing positive on an average day in the US, that means about 1,000 a day could have the more infectious variant. But he added that he expect more states to report case of the UK variant in the coming weeks.

Source: The Nation January 06, 2021 18:00 UTC