UNH’s Durham Campus has U.K. Variant of COVID-19 Found

It’s finally made its way to New Hampshire.  The highly contagious U.K. variant has been found in two individuals on the campus of UNH according to vpr.org.  Vaccinations are on the rise so hopefully, we can keep this U.K. variant at bay. This is not the first case of the U.K. variant of COVID-19, known as B.1.1.7, detected in New Hampshire.  According to vpr.org, the first case was confirmed by state public health officials last month.  That specific case was directly tied to an individual that had traveled internationally.

The CDC has since confirmed 5 cases of the variant in New Hampshire. UNH will not disclose if those that tested positive for the variant are students or staff but the lesson here, I think is to continue to mask up until fully vaccinated.  We are so far along, and the vaccines provide hope that we can be rid of this virus for good so now is not the time to let our guard down.  We can see the finish line, let’s not lose sight of it when we are so close.

Since UNH has only recently begun genomic sequencing on positive COVID cases and it is going back and running genomic sequencing on hundreds of cases that were positive from earlier in the semester. Chief of campus police and co-chair of UNH’s Testing and Tracing committee tells vpr.org that the results were “not unexpected.” My wife is scheduled for the vaccine on March 20^th and I can’t wait. Until then, we are being careful.  We have made it this far without getting COVID, I would hate to come down with it now that we have a vaccine available.