/https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/6069f2ea32274e986883042b/0x0.jpg?cropX1=0&cropX2=2352&cropY1=157&cropY2=1481 "Biden Covid adviser warns that ‘variation’ that changes ‘infects children very easily’ and that it can cause new barriers")
Top line
Despite a rapid explosion of vaccines, dr. Michael Osterholm, a member of President Joe Biden’s coronavirus advisory council, said on Sunday that the US would face ‘major challenges’ in fighting the pandemic before the summer, warning that the British coronavirus strain could more easily infect previous strains – something which experts are still debating.
Mike Osterholm. (Photo by Jerry Holt / Star Tribune via Getty Images)
Star Tribune via Getty Images
Key facts
On NBC’s Meet the press, Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, called the B.1.1.7 variant a “brand new ball game” because of how fast it spread among children, referring to about 750 Minnesota schools that have only reported the variant in the past two weeks.
Osterholm also suggested that the U.S. might consider new closures before allowing school this summer, saying vaccination alone would not limit rising cases in the next six to eight weeks, and said Fox News Sunday that there is not currently a country in the world that has seen a huge increase in this [variant] it does not close. ‘
“We will have to reconsider what we do,” Osterhold said, noting that the new variant is between 50% and 100% more contagious than previous strains and causes serious illnesses about 55% of the time.
He also said experts were “very concerned” that variants could develop in a way that evaded the protection of a vaccine, and asked the US to improve its global response measures to vaccinate low- and middle-income countries in order to improve the development of new strains that can enhance the efficacy of the vaccine; so far, the World Health Organization has said the current vaccine is expected to provide “at least some protection” against new strains.
Talk to CBS Face the Nation Rep. Ritchie Torres (DN.Y.) said Sunday that more than 70% of current Covid-19 cases in New York City consist of new variants, with the B.1.1.7 strain accounting for more than a quarter of the cases recommend. .
“There’s widespread Covid fatigue, and I’m worried that too many people have become complacent as we get closer to normalcy,” Torres said of the revival of the virus in New York, where new cases have climbed to two months in recent days. has. high.
Important quote
“We are really in category five hurricane status with respect to the rest of the world … This B.1.1.7 variant infects children very easily,” Osterholm said Meet the press. “Unlike previous strains of the virus, we did not see that children under the eighth grade became infected frequently, or that they were not frequently very ill. They did not transmit to the rest of the community … B.1.1.7 links it to his head. ‘
Important background
The B.1.1.7 variant, launched by experts in the UK, was first detected domestically in December and is one of only five ‘variants of concern’ identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC reports that it is still unclear how the disease caused by these new variants differs from the disease caused by other variants, but US government officials have warned that the British variant is linked to increased infection in children. However, British medical researchers concluded in February that the clinical impact of stress on children “has yet to be fully defined.” They found that the second wave of infections in the country, which is dominated by the B.1.1.7 variant, did send more children and young people to hospital, but said it was probably the higher incidence of Covid-19 currently responsible for the uptick. They also found no evidence that worse disease occurred in children and adolescents during the second wave, suggesting that the variant did not result in a worse infection among children than the original Covid-19 strain. Meanwhile, experts in Israel and Italy have also noticed an increase in the disease rate among children as new variants spread, but one Israeli official said there is still no evidence that the new variant is more dangerous for children. Osterholm’s warning comes just two weeks after the CDC issued new guidelines on reopening the school, weakening their physical recommendation from six feet to three feet.
What to pay attention to
Other strains that have not been tagged are also spreading rapidly. The B.1.5.2.6 strain, known as the New York variant, represents more than 40% of current cases in New York, Torres said Sunday. Meanwhile, the number of new cases of coronavirus in the country has risen by 19% in the past two weeks, with nearly 64,000 infections reported on Saturday.
Chief Critic
“I think there’s enough immunity in the population that you are not going to see a real fourth wave of infection,” Scott Gottlieb, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration, said Sunday. About 162 million vaccines have been administered domestically, and according to the CDC, about 60 million Americans, or nearly 20% of the country’s population, have been fully vaccinated.
Further reading
Gottlieb does not predict a ‘true fourth wave’ for us. This is what other experts say. (Forbes)
Despite progress, population protection against Covid-19 variants remains complex (Forbes)
Fauci: Virus variants that are more resistant to the spread of vaccines in New York (Forbes)
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