CONNECTICUT - Governor Ned Lamont confirmed Thursday that two cases of the UK variant of COVID-19 have been discovered in Connecticut.
According to Lamont, the two patients are between 15 and 25 years old and had traveled outside of Connecticut, one to Ireland and the other to New York and developed symptoms within 3-4 days of their return to the state.
"As we said last week, given the speed of this new strand of the virus and its identification in several states throughout the country, we presumed it was already in our state and this info this morning confirms that fact," Lamont said in a Tweet.
The more contagious variant of the virus was first identified in the United Kingdom. A Connecticut state laboratory upgraded its testing efforts last week to look for the variant, the governor's office said.
A case of the COVID-19 variant was discovered in neighboring New York in a man in his 60's earlier this week.