US health expert warns of ‘Covid hurricane’ with new variant

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm warned on Sunday that the new COVID-19 strain from the UK would be the dominant COVID variant in the US in the upcoming months.
• He urged the new administration as well as the leaders across the states to go ahead of the situation to curb out an impending “disaster.”
• Over 30 million Americans have already been vaccinated in the US as the government aims to inoculate the remaining 290 million population.

Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm warned that the more contagious, fatal COVID-19 variant from the UK will be the dominant strain of the virus in the US that would storm like a “hurricane.”

“The surge that is likely to occur with this new variant from England is going to happen in the next six to 14 weeks,” he said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday morning.

He encouraged President Joe Biden’s administration to expedite its inoculation efforts to as many people as possible, even at least with a first dose, particularly those who are highly vulnerable such as the elderly group.

“That hurricane is coming,” Osterholm told NBC. 

The dreadful prediction followed as COVID-19 cases in the US reached over 26 million while the death toll has climbed to 440,000 ━ the highest in the world, per the COVID data tracking by John Hopkins University.

The infectious disease expert said that another disaster is about to come through another wave of new infections if authorities across the nation won’t be able to get on top of the situation of managing the more deadly and infectious COVID strain.

“If we see that happen … we’re going to see something like we have not yet seen in this country … I see that hurricane category 5, 450 miles offshore,” he told NBC.

According to British prime minister Boris Johnson, the new strain could be 30 percent more fatal than the original COVID-19 variant.

The new variant was first confirmed in the US in late December, though it is presumed that it had already existed in the country since October.

Osterholm served under President Joe Biden’s transition COVID-19 advisory board. He is also the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Currently, around 30 million Americans have been already vaccinated in the US, with more than 50 million distributed vaccine doses, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 290 million individuals are still in need of the shots in a nationwide bid to mitigate the spread of the pandemic.

Source: The Guardian