Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the recent Johnson & Johnson vaccine study, as well as one conducted by Novavax, is evidence that mutations in the coronavirus leading to different lineages have ‘clinical consequences’, and that it should serve as a wake-up call for the vaccines. currently under development may need adjustments to combat new strains.
Fauci’s comments come hours after J&J released a study showing that the single-shot vaccine was 72% effective in the US against moderate to severe coronavirus, but dropped to 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa, where ‘troublesome’ variant has taken over.
“What we now know from this study, namely the J&J and the Novavax study, that antigen variation, IE mutations that lead to different lineages, do have clinical consequences, because as you can see, although the long-range effect in the sense of serious vaccines are still handled fairly well by the vaccines, this is a wake-up call for all of us who are going to handle them as the virus uses its devices to evade pressure, especially immunological pressure, that we will see the evolution of mutants., He said during the Coronavirus briefing in the White House on Friday.
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‘This means that we as a government, the companies, all of us who are together here, need to be nimble to adapt easily and to be able to easily make the version of the vaccine that is specifically targeted at any mutation. prevails at any given time, ”he said.
The so-called British variant, identified as B.1.1.7, has already been detected in more than 300 cases in the USA, while the P.1. mutation, presumably from Brazil, was confirmed in a case in Minnesota. The South African variant, which health officials previously described as worrying, was found in two cases in South Carolina earlier this week. The cases have no epidemiological connection, said dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, said in the call on Friday.
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Walensky and Fauci said increased genomic surveillance and sample testing would strengthen the country’s ability to combat the mutations, and possibly avoid scenarios that could dominate one another. According to Fauci, the best defense, in addition to continuing public health measures, is to vaccinate as many people as possible to keep transmission low.
“All of this tells us that it’s an incentive to do what we’ve been saying all along – to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible,” he said. “Mutations occur because the virus has, so to speak, a playing field to mutate. If you stop it and stop the replication, the virus cannot change.”
He said the variant that gets a stronghold in Los Angeles and California is due to the amount of viruses in the community.
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“You can be sure as long as there are a lot of viruses in the community, there will be mutations, that’s what viruses do, especially RNA viruses,” he said. “You give the virus the opportunity to adapt.”