We (and be "we" I mean smart scientists) need to do a lot more genomic sequencing to identify existing mutations of the Covid virus.

So we don't even know, at this point, how many variants of the virus exist and what threat they pose. I'm going to up my mask game.

Hotez told host Shep Smith that the new strains are even more problematic because “we haven’t been looking.” “We’ve been so profoundly underperforming in genomic sequencing, which is how we pick up these U.K, South African, Brazilian variants, so we know they’re in South Carolina, but they could be elsewhere,” said the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the U.K. variant, also known as B117, could be dominant in the U.S. by the spring. Hotez said that the key to protecting the population was vaccinating people at a quicker rate.

CNBC, "New Variants are Going to Hit us Pretty Hard"