The United Kingdom strand of COVID-19 is said to be a more contagious form of coronavirus and Gov. Larry Hogan revealed during his press conference on Tuesday, Jan. 12 that it has been identified in Maryland.
A married couple in Anne Arundel County have been confirmed to have this strand and are currently in quarantine. WJZ reports that one of them was recently abroad in the UK.
The detection came after the couple were tested for COVID-19 and the private lab that their swabs went to detected "some strange sequences they didn't understand," WBAL has reported. It was then sent to a state lab and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both of which confirmed it was the UK strand.