Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday that new variants of the coronavirus initially found in the UK, South Africa and Brazil – and since then identified in the United States – it is expected to continue and eventually exceed the number of cases of the earlier virus strain.
“We will continue to see the evolution of mutants,” Fauci, the country’s leading expert on infectious diseases, said in a newsletter on Friday.
The variant first identified in the UK according to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has now been found in 29 U.S. states. Many infectious variants first identified in South Africa and Brazil was also found on the outside.
Fauci said the vaccination of “as many people as we can, as fast as we can” is the best defense against new variants. “The virus has a playing field to mutate,” he said, explaining that the virus cannot mutate if it does not get the chance to recur.
“The virus will continue to mutate and will mutate for its own selective benefit,” he said. If COVID-19 is common in a community, it is only a matter of time before the virus mutates, as there is ample opportunity to adapt.
A newly identified strain of the coronavirus found in Southern California may be behind the drastic increase in cases in the region. A study released Jan. 18 found that more than a third of recent COVID-19 patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles were infected with the strain, according to a release summarizing the findings. .
“The fact is that when you have a virus that has the ability to transmit more effectively than the wild type in the community, sooner or later through purely viral dynamics itself, it will become more prevalent than the wild type,” Fauci said. said.
According to Fauci, variants are likely to affect other U.S. cities, but sequence attempts are not in place to identify everyone. Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House COVID-19 Response Team, has again called on Congress to address President Biden’s US rescue plan so that the federal government can scale up succession along with other strategies to suppress the pandemic.
“We have to treat each case as if it were a variant,” Walensky said, noting that “by the time someone has symptoms, gets a test, has a positive result, and we get the order, our opportunity to be real doing case management and contact tracing is largely gone. “
Fauci said federal officials are concerned about a number of variants, most notably the mutation first identified in the UK, which appears to transmit more easily than the original COVID-19 strain. The characteristic, according to him, means that its dominance is inevitable. Current projections show that the variant will ‘become more dominant than the wild type’ by March or April, he said.
“The fundamental principle of getting people vaccinated as quickly and as efficiently as possible will always be the best way to prevent the further evolution of any mutant. Because if you do, you prevent replication, and replication is essential for mutation.”
In addition to vaccinating as many people as possible with the current vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, Fauci said federal health officials and companies developing vaccines should stay “smart” to produce variants.
“We as a government, the companies, all of us who are participating in this together, will have to be vigilant to adapt easily to make versions of the vaccine that are specifically targeted at any mutation that is common at any given time,” he said. he said. said.
In recent weeks, there have been concerns that the vaccines may be less effective against some variants, especially the highly transmissible South African variant.
The US biotechnology firm Novavax said on Thursday that its two-shot COVID-19 vaccine showed an overall efficiency of 89.3% in a major Phase 3 clinical trial in Britain, and remained highly effective against a variant first identified there. Other results showed that it offers less protection against the variant identified in South Africa, but the company as well as an outside health expert were still optimistic about the level of protection against both new strains.
Fauci also has new results from Vaccine trials from Johnson & Johnson, which overall showed 66% efficiency, and 72% in the United States. He acknowledged that the results may seem less impressive compared to Pfizer and Moderna’s overall efficacy, but stressed that the vaccine has other benefits, namely its impact on serious diseases and the ease of single-dose administration.
“In the United States, in South Africa and in Brazil, the overall efficacy for serious diseases was 85%. And in the study, including the South African isolate, there were in fact no hospitalizations or deaths in the vaccine group, while in the placebo group was there, “Fauci said.” So it tells us that we now have an extra added candidate for vaccine. “
“It has important potential and real implications locally and globally, because … it is a single shot vaccine what you start to see after the first and only shot of 7 to 10 days, “Fauci said.” It can be stored in an ordinary refrigerator, it’s cheap and the company is capable of making doses in the billions. “
The briefing took place a day after Fauci said President Joe Biden’s attempt to reopen most schools within 100 days may not happen. In an interview with the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association on Thursday, Fauci issued a warning about the purpose of Mr. Biden.
“It may not happen because there may be mitigating circumstances,” Fauci said.
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday reiterated his support for Mr. Praying for a $ 1.9 billion COVID-19 aid package in Congress reiterated that the White House is not interested in breaking the bill into smaller parts. Some Republicans do not like the price for the bill, and it is unclear whether it will be able to gain any IDP votes.
Psaki said Mr. Biden reached out to both Republican and Democratic members of Congress to discuss coronavirus relief.