âEscape Mutationsâ May Drive New COVID Resurgence
Feb. 1, 2021 -- CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, announced Monday that the federal government was sending technical experts to help investigators in Maryland and South Carolina after those states confirmed three cases of the B.1.351 variant of the coronavirus.
B.1.351 was first identified in South Africa. The CDC and World Health Organization have called it a âvariant of concernâ because it has developed changes to its genetic code that make it more menacing than the original version of the virus.
None of the people who caught this version of the coronavirus had traveled, and they were not related, which shows the variant is probably already spreading from person to person in the community.