COVID-19 variants 'wave' in US weeks away: Experts

By Ovunc Kutlu

ANKARA (AA) - A surge in the novel coronavirus variants looks weeks away in the US, but new cases are expected to fall by this summer, according to health experts.

"It could result in more of a wave in, say, April or May than we would have expected otherwise," Trevor Bedford of the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center said in an event held by the center on Tuesday.

"But I still do suspect that things will be brought under control in the summer, and there will be very little virus circulating," he added.

Dr. Josh Schiffer, an infectious diseases specialist at Fred Hutchinson, said the variants make it "difficult to prevent a fourth wave altogether."

While there are 1,881 reported cases in 45 US states of the UK variant B.1.1.7, 46 cases of the South African B.1.351 strain are observed in 10 states, and the P.1 variant that emerged in Brazil was seen in five cases in two states, according to latest data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

CDC said last month the B.1.1.7 variant that emerged in September 2020 has quickly become the dominant circulating SARS-CoV-2 variant in England and the rest of the world.

Out of 82.1 million distributed doses of vaccines in the US, 65 million have been administered as of 6 a.m. EDT (1100GMT) Tuesday, but only 19.8 million people, or 6% of the US population, have received two doses, according to CDC.

More than 28.2 million cases have been recorded in the US since the start of the pandemic with over 502,000 deaths, Johns Hopkins University data showed.