A New Strain of Coronavirus Is Here and It’s Almost Certainly Spreading—but There’s Room for Optimism
The two cases of a new strain of the virus first detected in South Africa could signal a new chapter in the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic.
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A new strain of the novel coronavirus that first appeared in South Africa has been detected in the United States for the first time.
On Wednesday, geneticists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told South Carolina health officials they had found a case of the B.1.351 variant of SARS-CoV-2 in samples from the Palmetto State. The same day, testers with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control found a second case of B.1.351 in state samples.
The two cases could signal a new chapter in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed nearly 2.2 million people—including more than 432,000 in the United States—since it first took hold in China in December 2019.