Over the holiday weekend, more than a dozen countries reported cases involving the UK SARS-CoV-2 variant, with a few reporting their first cases of a similar but distinct South African variant.As the world approached 1 year since the first media reports surfaced of an unusual pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, China, the global case count topped 80 million.Variant detected in multiple countriesFollowing the recent detection of the more-transmissible UK variant, several more countries spanning multiple continents reported their first detections over the weekend, triggering more travel bans and other related measures to slow the spread.In North America, the Public Health Agency of Canada on Dec 26 reported two cases in Ontario, both in people who