Officials Say Reports of New U.S. Coronavirus Variant Are Inaccurate

Officials Say Reports of New U.S. Coronavirus Variant Are Inaccurate

The United States reported more than 300,000 cases in a day for the first time. President-elect Biden plans to release nearly all vaccine doses to states, rather than hold back supply to ensure timely second doses.

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Reports of a highly contagious new variant in the United States, published on Friday by multiple news outlets, are based on speculative statements made by Dr. Deborah Birx and are inaccurate, according to several government officials.

The erroneous report originated at a recent meeting where Dr. Birx, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, presented graphs of the escalating cases in the country. She suggested to other members of the task force that a new, more transmissible variant originating in the U.S. might explain the surge, as another variant did in Britain.

Her hypothesis made it into a weekly report sent to state governors. “This fall/winter surge has been at nearly twice the rate of rise of cases as the spring and summer surges. This acceleration suggests there may be a USA variant that has evolved here, in addition to the UK variant that is already spreading in our communities and may be 50% more transmissible,” the report read. “Aggressive mitigation must be used to match a more aggressive virus.”

Dismayed, officials at the C.D.C. tried to have the speculative statements removed, but were unsuccessful, according to three people familiar with the events.

C.D.C. officials did not agree with her assessment and asked to remove it but were told no, according to one frustrated C.D.C. official, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Dr. Birx could not immediately be reached for comment.

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The news of a possible new variant first appeared Friday afternoon on CNN, quickly spread to other outlets. Responding to media inquiries about the variant, the C.D.C. issued a formal statement refuting the theory.

“Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are monitoring all emerging variants of the coronavirus, including in 5,700 samples collected in November and December,” according to Jason McDonald, a spokesman for the agency. “To date, neither researchers nor analysts at C.D.C. have seen the emergence of a particular variant in the United States,” he said.

Among the variants circulating in the U.S. are B.1.1.7, first identified in Britain and now driving a surge and overwhelming hospitals there. The variant has been spotted in a handful of states, but the C.D.C. estimates that it accounts for less than 0.5 percent of cases in the country so far.

Another variant circulating at low levels in the U.S., known as B 1.346, contains a deletion that is also present in B.1.1.7. “But I have seen nothing on increased transmission,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who discovered that variant.

That variant has been in the United States for three months and also accounts for fewer than 0.5 percent of cases, so it is unlikely to be more contagious than other variants, according to a C.D.C. scientist who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter.

All viruses evolve, and the coronavirus is no different. “Based on scientific understanding of viruses, it is highly likely there are many variants evolving simultaneously across the globe,” Mr. McDonald, of the C.D.C., said. “However, it could take weeks or months to identify if there is a single variant of the virus that causes Covid-19 fueling the surge in the United States similar to the surge in the United Kingdom.”

Carl Zimmer contributed reporting from New Haven and Noah Weiland from Washington D.C.

(Correction: Jan. 9, 2021 — An earlier version of this article misidentified the news outlet that first published the report of a possible new variant. It was CNN, not CNBC.)

In a sharp break with the Trump administration, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. intends to release nearly all available doses of the coronavirus vaccine soon after he is inaugurated, rather than hold back millions of vials to guarantee second doses will be available.

The decision is part of an aggressive effort to “to ensure the Americans who need it most get it as soon as possible,” the Biden transition team said on Friday. The vaccination plan, to be formally unveiled next week, also will include federally run vaccination sites in places like high school gyms and sports stadiums, and mobile units to reach high-risk populations.

The president-elect has vowed to get “at least 100 million Covid vaccine shots into the arms of the American people” during his first 100 days in office.

The decision to release the vast majority of vaccine doses set off a sharp debate among public health experts. The two vaccines that have received emergency approval each require two doses, and the Trump administration has so far been holding back about half of its supply to ensure that booster doses will be available for those already inoculated.

Officials at Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s vaccine program, had noted that doses would stop being sequestered after the first few weeks of rollout. But the announcement by the Biden administration sets the clearest benchmark yet for front-loading shots, then distributing them as they become available. And Warp Speed officials on Friday were critical of the president-elect’s decision.

The Food and Drug Administration — whose advice Mr. Biden has pledged to follow — has spoken out strongly against changing the dosing schedule, as some other countries have opted to do, calling such a move “premature and not rooted solidly in the available evidence.” Some public health experts fear that second doses would be delayed by the decision.

But others called it a smart measure and said it was imperative to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible — so long as the second doses are not delayed. The Biden team said it was confident that the supply would be enough, and that Mr. Biden would invoke the Defense Production Act if necessary to bolster the supply of second doses.

“The president-elect believes we must accelerate distribution of the vaccine while continuing to ensure the Americans who need it most get it as soon as possible,” said T.J. Ducklo, a spokesman for the Biden transition team.

The announcement that Mr. Biden intends to free up extra doses coincided with a letter from eight Democratic governors — including Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, both of whom have clashed with President Trump — imploring the current administration to release all available doses to the states as soon as possible.

“The failure to distribute these doses to states who request them is unconscionable and unacceptable,” the governors wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times and sent Friday to the secretary of health, Alex M. Azar II, and Gen. Gustave F. Perna, who is in charge of vaccine distribution.

“We demand that the federal government begin distributing these reserved doses to states immediately,” the letter said.

Mr. Biden’s promise of 100 million shots in arms is an ambitious one, and the Trump administration’s rocky rollout — which Mr. Biden called “a travesty” on Friday — has not made his task any easier. As of Thursday, the Trump administration had shipped more than 21 million vaccine doses, and millions more were already in the federal government’s hands.

Yet only 5.9 million people had received a dose. State and local public health officials, already overwhelmed with rising infections, have been struggling to administer the vaccine to hospital workers and at-risk older Americans while most people remain in the dark about when they might be protected.

The biggest problem so far has not been a lack of vaccine, but the difficulties that state and local governments face in distributing the doses they have. Capacity and logistics, not shortages, are keeping vaccines from being administered.

Dr. Leana S. Wen, an emergency physician and public health expert at the George Washington University School of Public Health, said she was surprised and concerned about Mr. Biden’s new strategy.

“This is not the problem we’re trying to solve right now,” Dr. Wen said.

Speaking at a news briefing on Friday, Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, the F.D.A. commissioner, urged states that have used only a small part of their supply to begin vaccinating lower-priority groups, while still observing government guidelines. Most states are still prioritizing frontline health care workers and older Americans in group residential settings.

Expanding the targeted groups “will go a long way toward using these vaccines appropriately and getting them into the arms of individuals,” Dr. Hahn said.