Starting Monday, the United States requires US citizens and any passenger coming from the United Kingdom to present
a negative coronavirus test
carried out in the last 72 hours in order to enter the country.
[Follow our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]
This was indicated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, in English) in a statement last week.
The measure was taken after the UK health authorities alerted to the discovery of a until recently unknown strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which according to preliminary studies could be up to 70% more infectious than previous variants.
"
The airlines will have to confirm the negative result of all passengers before boarding
and, if a passenger decides not to take the test, they may deny boarding," the CDC pointed out.
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The American airline Delta had already begun on Thursday to ask its passengers for a negative test before boarding and United Airlines announced that it would do the same as of Monday.
"We have to be vigilant (against this strain)," Dr. Valerie Fitzgerald said Monday morning in an interview with our sister network MSNBC.
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This happens while the country has already registered
19 million coronavirus infections and almost 334,000 deaths
since the beginning of the pandemic, according to data from NBC News, also a sister network of Telemundo.
The government's top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, assured this Sunday in an interview with CNN that this strain should be taken
"very seriously"
and supported the government's decision to require negative COVID-19 tests.
Although he declined to comment on whether such action should have been taken earlier, he opined that the strain variant is something
"to be followed very carefully."
"We are analyzing it very intensively now," he added.
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Likewise, Fauci assured that the country is in a critical phase of the pandemic and that
"the darkest days" are yet to come.
"The reason I'm concerned and my public health colleagues are also concerned is that we could see an increase in cases post-season, in the sense of Christmas, New Years, and, as I have described, as a surge over a wave, "he said.
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It also predicted that
the general population will be widely immunized in late March or early April,
after the most exposed workers, the elderly and other segments of the public who are prioritized for vaccines.
Virtual parties
Fauci's comments come as the country recorded its
deadliest month since the start of the coronavirus pandemic:
More than 63,000 people have died from the virus in December so far.
In California, the third state with the most deaths from COVID-19, after New York and Texas, about
50% of the deaths have occurred in Latinos
.
For this reason, some doctors ask the community
not to have parties in the New Year.
“
An alternative is to meet by Zoom.
I know it's not the same, and more than Latinos we are used to getting together as a family, but now virtuality would be the best, ”Dr. Víctor Cisneros, from the Emergency Department of the Irvine University of California, told Noticias Telemundo.
Long-term health centers (for people with chronic illnesses) and nursing homes that have opted to use Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine will begin vaccination efforts Monday, according to the CDC.
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More vaccines will be distributed to Americans in the coming weeks and months, and Pfizer and Moderna are expected to jointly deliver 300 million doses of their vaccines by the middle of next year, enough to vaccinate nearly half the nation's population.
With information from AP, CNN, USA Today and MSNBC.
