New York, January 5, 2021
The USA has been reeling under the onslaught of Covid-19, with 350,000 Americans having succumbed to it since the first death reported in February 2020, and now to make matters worse, 1 person has been found to be infected by the faster spreading, more contagious new strain of the virus.
Andrew Cuomo, the U.S Gov. has said that the new virus has reached New York and been reported in a man who is in his 60’s and works in a jewellery store at Saratoga Springs. This he said looks more like a community spread since the man had not undertaken any travel recently.
The new virus had been first found in the UK where new lockdown restrictions have been imposed in a bid to control the fast spread. In the opinion of Boris Johnson the PM, it was slated to be the hardest lockdown so far. The reopening of schools and universities was also cancelled and till mid-February at least, they are geared up for online teaching.
The vaccine distribution phase in the US is underway, with 15.4 million doses already distributed. The administration of those doses though needs to be scaled up since the people who have received those doses are less than 4.6 million. This information was released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In New Jersey, only 25 % of the doses have been used so far. This number though will increase in view of the ending of the holiday season.
The airports registered a huge number of travellers, totalling to more than 1.3 million. The high number of travellers was on account of people returning from their outstation family visits or holiday destinations.
The health officials had warned people against non-essential travel but the high numbers recorded show that the instructions were not followed as strictly as it should have been.
