Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin have discovered a highly contagious SARS-CoV-2 variant, B117 (501Y), had been unknowingly spreading for months in the United States by October 2020. Their research is published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
"By the time we learned about the U.K. variant in December, it was already silently spreading across the globe," said Lauren Ancel Meyers, the director of the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at The University of Texas at Austin. "We estimate that the B117 variant probably arrived in the U.S. by October of 2020, two months before we knew it existed."
The researchers analyzed data from 15 countries and estimate the chance that travelers from the U.K. introduced the variant into 15 countries between Sept. 22 and Dec. 7, 2020. They discovered that the virus variant had made its way to all 15 countries by mid-November and arrived in the United States in mid-October.
This study sheds light on the need for laboratory surveillance of resulting variant strains. Early detection and tracking of new variants are paramount in the containment of SARS-CoV-2 variants for the future.