Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday that the available COVID-19 vaccines appear less effective against the new strains of the coronavirus, CNBC reports.
what happened
White House health adviser Fauci said on Thursday that the new available COVID-19 vaccines – specifically the Pfizer and Modern vaccines – are helping with the new COVID-19 mutations that are emerging around the world. But there are still concerns.
- “We follow the one in South Africa very closely, which is a little more worrying, but still not something we do not think we can handle,” Fauci told CNBC.
Fauci said mutations often occur under viruses. But according to CNBC, the mutations can be defeated if enough people are vaccinated.
- “Viruses do not mutate unless they recur,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN.
- “And if you can suppress it through a very good vaccination campaign, then you can avoid this harmful effect of the mutations,” Fauci told CNN.
- ‘In short: we pay close attention. There are alternative plans if we ever have to change the vaccine. This is not something that is very burdensome; we can do that given the platforms we have, ‘Fauci told CNBC.
What the vaccine developers say
Pfizer-BioNTech announced earlier this week the results of a new study looking at whether their COVID-19 vaccine could beat the new variant in the UK.
- The research – published on bioRxiv – showed ‘no biologically significant difference in neutralizing activity’, as I wrote about Deseret News. This means that the COVID-19 variant did not change enough properties to evade the vaccine.