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This week public health officials confirmed Connecticut’s first case of a coronavirus variant originally detected in South Africa. But the extent to which Connecticut is screening for COVID variants remains unknown. The state public health lab lacks the capacity to test for COVID variants, and while the state is working with two outside labs to conduct variant surveillance, it has formalized no contracts to outline the parameters of that work.
The state is working with The Jackson Laboratory and Yale to monitor the presence in Connecticut of a pool of COVID-19 variants that are emerging globally.
So far, both the United Kingdom (B.1.1.7) variant, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said is more contagious, and the South African (B.1.351) variant have been detected in Connecticut residents.
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The Kent coronavirus variant is up to 70 per cent more infectious and 30 per cent more deadly than the original strain, scientists fear.
Concerns about the new strain follows reports that more than 50 countries have cases of the mutant B.1.1.7 strain.
Professor Sharon Peacock, head of the Covid-19 Genomics UK (Cog-UK) Consortium, said the variant is going to sweep the world, in all probability .
She also said the increased transmissibility of the virus will likely cause scientists difficulties for years to come.
The variant - which is already the dominant strain across the UK - is also understood to be 30 per cent more deadly than previous strains, as well as 70 per cent more infectious.