Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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New, highly transmissible Covid-19 variants could reverse the country’s control of the pandemic and could undermine all our efforts against the disease if the virus spreads to different parts of the world, the head of the US. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.
U.S. health officials have warned in recent weeks that the emergence of many infectious variants, particularly the B.1.1.7 strain that originated in the UK, could reverse the current downward trend in infections in the US and the country’s recovery of the pandemic may be delayed. .
The problem has not been isolated in the United States. As the coronavirus spreads, it makes a large number of copies of itself, and each version is a little different from the previous ones, experts say. As more people become infected, problematic mutations are more likely to occur.
“Even if you do not necessarily tend to be part of the global health effort, we must do so, because all the efforts we make to move forward here in this country can be undermined in a heartbeat. From these variants “Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, told the National Academy of Medicine and the American Public Health Association on Wednesday.
Scientists are not surprised by the emergence of the variant and have reiterated that the currently available vaccines should still work against it, although it may not be as effective as against the original “wild” strain.
Moderna said on Wednesday that he had directed doses of a booster shot that specifically targeted the variant distributed in South Africa, known as the B.1.351 strain, to the National Institutes of Health.
“We know that this virus knows no geographical boundaries, and addressing this reality is more urgent than ever, given the rapid spread of the Covid-19 variant that reverses the progress made in controlling this pandemic,” said Walensky.
The US reports a weekly average of approximately 71,562 new Covid-19 cases per day, a decrease of 12% compared to a week ago and a significant decrease from when the average new cases in the US in early January a peaked at nearly 250,000 cases per day, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Although not every country reports similar declines, global cases of Covid-19 in the US have been declining for six consecutive weeks since Sunday, according to the latest World Health Organization situation report published on Tuesday.
The decline is welcome news as countries try to administer their initial doses of Covid-19 vaccines. While some countries have been administering vaccines since December, some are just starting to get their initial shots.
The first consignment of vaccines delivered by the World Health Organization’s COVAX program arrived in Ghana on Wednesday. Some experts have previously said that the distribution of vaccines may be too late, as prosperous countries have entered into their own transactions with vaccine manufacturers, claiming that they initially need doses.
“The Covid-19 pandemic was a strong reminder of how mutual we are as a global community,” Walensky said.
– CNBC’s Berkeley Lovelace Jr. and Natasha Turak contributed to this report.