White House Officials revealed Wednesday that the UK‘s “Super Covid” variant is now said to be the dominant form of the coronavirus in the United States.
According to The Daily Mail, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky announced that the UK variant is now the most prevalent form of the virus and that it has now been found in every state in the U.S. and its two territories.
In January, the CDC predicted that the “super-covid” B117 variant that emerged in the U.K. would become dominant in the U.S. by March, but as vaccinations accelerated, the variant spread slower than initially predicted.
The B117 variant is thought to be 50 and 70 percent more infectious and up to 64 percent deadlier than any of the virus’s previously dominant strains.
The CDC reports that there have been 16,275 confirmed cases of the UK variant, in addition to the 386 cases of the South African B1351 variant and the 356 cases of Brazil’s P1 variant.
The CDC also announced that nearly half of the new coronavirus infections nationwide are coming out of five states, New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. This situation could pressure the federal government to consider changing how it distributes vaccines by sending more doses to these specific hot spots.
According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, those five states together reported 44 percent of the country’s recent COVID-19 infections, or nearly 197,500 new cases, in the latest available seven-day period.
