California Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced the first known case of the new and apparently more contagious variant of the coronavirus in the nation’s most populated state, following the first reported U.S. case in Colorado.
Newsom said he had just learned of the finding in a Southern California case Wednesday. He announced it during an online conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert.
Fauci said: “I don’t think Californians should think that this is odd, it’s to be expected.”
Newsom did not provide any other details about the person who was infected.
The Colorado and California cases have triggered a host of questions about how the mutant version circulating in England arrived in the U.S. and whether it is too late to stop it now, with top experts saying it is probably already spreading elsewhere in the United States.
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Wednesday that local health officials have tested a few dozen samples from COVID-positive patients locally and so far haven’t found any that contained the new variant.
“But this doesn’t meant that the variant is not circulating in LA County,” she said. The county can only run a limited amount of the gene-sequencing test that detects the variant, she explained.
Officials will keep spot-checking results, but there’s a high probability the variant is already here, according to Ferrer.
Even if it is, she said, that wouldn’t change the infection-control measures that are already in place.