US Covid variant: Report of highly contagious new strain refuted

The White House coronavirus task force report on Friday of a new Covid variant was based on speculation, The New York Times said. The source of the misinformation was said to be Dr Deborah Birx, who left her role advising the Trump administration in December. The report was based on a presentation she made to the task force in which she asserted that there was a new variant, and made a connection with the UK strain which earlier on Friday compelled London Mayor Sadiq Khan to declare a major incident in the capital . Officials from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention had dissented from Dr Birx's suppositions, and had tried to redact them from the report that was sent to governors. They rejected the US variant in a statement which said that "neither researchers nor analysts at CDC have seen the emergence of a particular variant in the United States". The news of the new variant had been announced as a Reuters tally reported the deaths of more than 4,000 people, the highest daily death toll to date. States are under immense pressure with Los Angeles in Californa soon expecting 1,000 Covid deaths a week, as this video documents. The current case rate is nearly double that reported in the spring and summer of last year with the US is currently averaging at least 228,400 new cases a day and 2,760 virus-related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. With America reeling from the Covid pandemic, president-elect Joe Biden on Friday called for more vaccines to be released when he takes office. The plan would be a departure from the Trump administration's strategy of holding back supplies to ensure that required second doses of the vaccines are available. Manufacturing would have to be consistent enough to supply those second doses on schedule, three or four weeks after the first. "The president-elect believes we must accelerate distribution of the vaccine while continuing to ensure the Americans who need it most get it as soon as possible," TJ Ducklo, a spokesman for Mr Biden's transition team, told Reuters. The US vaccine distribution project began slowly as hospitals have not been able to administer the shots as quickly as they have received them. A federal programme aimed at inoculating residents and staff at long-term care homes was also behind schedule. One problem is that there is no federal infrastructure or plan in place for administering the vaccines once they have been distributed, leaving states to design their own strategies with little funding to do so. The effort has fallen far short of the Trump administration's goal of having 20 million people vaccinated by the end of 2020. New York on Friday became the latest state to expand its vaccination distribution programme to seniors, with Governor Andrew Cuomo announcing that people aged 75 and over could start receiving the shot next week. In Arizona, where people over 75 are eligible to receive the vaccine in some counties, Republican Governor Doug Ducey said on Friday the state would use the Arizona Cardinals' football stadium as a 24-hour vaccination site to speed up the process. In Texas, Florida and Georgia, which are among some dozen states that have either begun or will soon begin inoculating vulnerable seniors, people over 65 are eligible for a vaccine shot. West Virginia and Indiana are so far limiting the vaccine to those over 80. West Virginia leads the country in first-dose inoculations, having administered 59 per cent of its allotted vaccine supply, according to the CDC. With the US struggling, here you can read how the UK intends to meet its own stiff vaccine targets . ____________________________________________________

US Covid variant: Report of highly contagious new strain refuted

White House task force findings based on speculation by Dr Deborah Birx