Scientists are sending the U.S. a warning: What's happening right now in the United Kingdom with the new coronavirus variant could likely happen in the U.S., and the country has a short window to prepare.
"I feel a sense of déjà vu right now about the situation we were in back in the spring," says epidemiologist Emma Hodcroft at the University of Bern in Switzerland. "I think a lot of countries are looking at the U.K. right now and saying, 'Oh, isn't that too bad that it's happening there, just like we did with Italy in February.
"But we've seen in this pandemic a few times that, if the virus can happen somewhere else, it can probably happen in your country, too."
The new variant, called B.1.1.7, appears to be significantly more contagious than previous versions of the virus. It has been spreading rapidly in the U.K. and causing a huge surge in cases, hospitalizations and death. Last week, the U.K. reported a record-breaking 419,000 cases. The governments of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland issued strict lockdowns, urging people to stay inside their homes.
Studies suggest the new variant increases the transmissibility by about 50%. While restrictions have largely suppressed previous versions of the virus in the U.K., B.1.1.7 has continued to grow exponentially.
Now scientists say the virus is already here in the U.S., and circulating widely-- albeit at very low levels, says computational biologist Trevor Bedford at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
"A rough estimate, for across the U.S., would be a frequency of about 1 in 1000," he told NPR last week. "So about 1 in every 1000 COVID infection is due to the variant."
Bedford expects that percentage to rise quickly. In England, B.1.1.7 took about three month to take over and become the dominant strain in the outbreak. Scientists believed the variant first emerged in September. By December, it had become the dominant version in London.
"So I roughly expect a similar timeline of three months, from the variant's initial arrival in the U.S. in December to starting to dominate the virus population around March," Bedford said.

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