After a month of declining coronavirus cases in the United States, President Joe Biden’s CDC director has warned that the increase in mutant coronavirus strains could wipe out all the gains made so far in fighting the pandemic. .
“Please hear me clearly: at this level of cases with variants spreading, we will completely lose the hard-earned land we have gained,” said dr. Rochelle Walensky, who appointed Biden to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). , told reporters on Monday. She noted that new infections increased by 2% last week compared to the week before, a stark contrast to how the numbers had decreased over the past few weeks.
Walensky has called on countries to lift COVID-19 restrictions prematurely, which could delay or prevent the transmission of the virus.
“I am very concerned about reports that more states are reversing the exact social health measures we have recommended to protect people from COVID-19,” Walensky explained. She urged the public to continue wearing masks and other health precautions.
“Ultimately, vaccination is what will bring us out of this pandemic,” Walensky added. “To get there, we have to vaccinate a lot more people.”
Public health experts shared Walensky’s feelings.
“Although it has improved significantly since January, today we have an extraordinarily high circulating SARS-CoV-2 virus with daily cases and mortality rates comparable to the peak of last summer’s surge,” said Dr. Russell Medford, chair of the Center for Global Health. Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, wrote to Salon. “Under these conditions, we run the real risk of a new and even greater surge with coronavirus variants that exhibit higher transmissibility, increased virulence, and vaccine resistance.”
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, confirmed Walensky’s concerns.
“While the current vaccines cover the most important variants we have identified so far, there is a risk that a variant will emerge that escapes the vaccine,” Benjamin explained in an email to Salon. “Such an escape would re-establish a new resurgence of infectious diseases.”
Dr. Alfred Sommer, dean of emeritus and professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Salon that he believes Walensky is’ honest and careful. South African variant now in circulation) which will be less sensitive to current vaccines. He added that this problem could be addressed if pharmaceutical companies responded by making new variants on existing vaccines to address mutant strains, although he noted that production and distribution issues hampered the ability of companies to put revised vaccines into the arms of the to get public will be limited.
Until then, Sommer argued that people should follow guidelines for public health.
“Get vaccinated, support the government’s investment in detecting and responding to new variants, and be sensitive to the appropriate use of masking and social distance as recommended,” Sommer told Salon.
Benjamin agrees with Sommer’s view, adding that the way to prevent the progress made so far in the fight against COVID-19 is to make sure that coronavirus variants cannot be repeated. This in turn means that they cannot create mutant strains that can be more transmissible or evade vaccines.
“The way to stop this is to wear a mask, do hand hygiene and social distance,” Benjamin told Salon, adding that Americans should also “avoid large gatherings until we get effective disease control and community immunity via vaccination.”
Not all of the medical experts who spoke to Salon agreed with the CDC director on the variants, although all stressed the importance of following public health guidelines, such as wearing masks and taking social distances. Dr Monica Gandhi, a doctor of infectious diseases and professor of medicine at the University of California – San Francisco, told Salon in an email that she did not agree with Walensky’s statement.
“All of the approved vaccines in the U.S. offer 100 percent protection against serious COVID-19 disease that requires hospitalization, even when the trials have been conducted in regions in which the variant is circulating,” Gandhi explained. She cites as an example how the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, administered in a single dose, stopped 100 percent of COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths in the United States, Latin America, and South Africa. This happened even though 95 percent of the South African strains at the time were of the B.1.351 variant and 69 percent of those in Brazil were also of a new mutant strain.
“Re-infection with variants leading to a symptomatic infection after vaccination or natural infection is rare,” Gandhi argued, pointing to recent studies.
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