Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Photo Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.
Jan. 13, 2021 By Christina Santucci
A Queens resident has tested positive for the highly-transmissible variant of COVID-19, city officials announced Wednesday.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a news conference that the variant, which was first identified in the United Kingdom, had been detected in two New York City residents. One resident is from Queens, the other from Manhattan.
One of them had recently traveled to the U.K., although officials did not say which one. Furthermore, officials declined to identify the neighborhoods where the residents live, citing privacy concerns.
Dr. Dave Chokshi, the city’s health commissioner, said that both people had been diagnosed with coronavirus in late December, and genetic sequencing showed that their infections had been from the U.K. variant “within the past few hours.”
So far, 12 cases of the U.K. variant have been detected in New York state, de Blasio said.
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