Researchers claim the new strain of COVID-19 which was recently spotted in the United Kingdom may have already infected many people in the United States now. The scientists fear many people may already have been infected with the new variant found in UK, and the virus may have been circulating in the US as early as mid-November. 

Michael Worobey, from the ecology and evolutionary biology department of the University of Arizona told a news agency that at least “hundreds of people” may have been infected with the new strain by now. He also claimed that there is a strong possibility that the new strain of the virus may have arrived multiple times in multiple places across the country. A Professor from  the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Trevor Bedford supported these claims by telling the newsagency that many infected travellers who left London may have been unknowingly carrying the strain, which is way more infectious than the first strain which showed up in Wuhan last year and has infected millions across the globe since then.

In UK were PM made an announcement about the new variant, scientists were able to trace the first instance of the variant virus to September 20 in Kent, which is a county southeast of London. These explanations say the virus reached the US in mid-November. So far, scientists in US have not found any match with the UK variant in the US. But it might be due to the inability of the system to catch the infected.  

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