Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who was selected to serve as director of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, speaks at an event at The Queen Theater in Wilmington, Del., Tuesday, December 8, 2020.
Susan Walsh | AP
The United States needs to deploy Covid-19 vaccines quickly and sharpen their oversight before many infectious variants take hold or mutate the virus again and make the pandemic even worse, Drs. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, said Wednesday.
Three variants first identified in the UK, South Africa and Brazil have raised concerns among researchers, according to a research opinion she shared with Drs. Anthony Fauci, medical adviser to the White House, wrote. A CDC study published in January warned that the variant in the UK, known as B.1.1.7, is likely to become the dominant strain circulating in the US in March.
The B.1.1.7 variant appears to be highly transmissible, and ‘preliminary data indicate the possibility of increased severity of disease with infection’, Walensky, Fauci and dr. Henry Walke, the CDC’s Covid incident manager, wrote in the statement published. Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA.
Walensky said in a separate interview with JAMA on Wednesday that the variant is thought to be about 50% more transmissible than previous strains, and early data suggest it could be up to 50% more lethal.
“Modeling data illustrated how a more contagious variant, such as B.1.1.7, has the potential to exacerbate the course of the US pandemic and reverse the current downward trend in new infections and further slow down the control of the pandemic. , “Walensky said in the newspaper.
This is an evolving story. Come check back later for updates.