LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Leading American infectious disease specialist Dr Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday he foresaw that America would achieve enough collective COVID-19 immunity through vaccinations to regain a semblance of normalcy by the fall of 2021, despite early setbacks in vaccine deployment.
Fauci made his remarks during an online discussion of the pandemic with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who initially announced that a more contagious coronavirus variant originally found in Britain had been detected in his state, ‘ a day after the first known U.S. case in Colorado.
Newsom said coronavirus variant B.1.1.7 was confirmed earlier in the day in a patient in Southern California. He did not provide further details. But the California Department of Public Health later said in a statement that the person, a patient in San Diego County, has no travel history, suggesting the variant is spreading within the community.
Fauci said he was “not surprised” and added that additional cases of the variant are likely to emerge across the country and that the mutation of such viruses is normal.
“It seems that this particular mutation can better transmit the virus from one person to another,” he said. However, individuals infected with earlier forms of SARS-CoV-2 do not appear to be re-infected by this, which means that any immunity already acquired has protection against this particular strain, “Fauci added.
He also stressed that the so-called British variant is apparently not more serious in the disease it causes, and that newly approved COVID-19 vaccines will be just as effective against it as against previously known forms of the virus.
The same is apparently true for a second new variant, which is also more contagious and which was first reported in South Africa, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Yet the emergence of a more transmissible variant could make a rapid implementation of vaccinations critical.
President-elect Joe Biden warned Tuesday that it could vaccinate most Americans, given the initial distribution rate of vaccines left behind by the Trump administration’s promises. He called on Congress to approve more money for the effort.
“WE WILL GET STARTED”
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Wednesday he was confident that early errors in the distribution of the vaccine would be overcome.
“With the start of January, the feeling is that we are going to gain momentum to catch up,” he told Newsom, saying he expects vaccinations to be widely available to the general public by April.
Assuming that the broad vaccination campaign as in May, June and July progresses, “by early autumn we will have enough good herd immunity to really return to a strong semblance of normality – schools, theaters, sporting events, restaurants , ”Fauci said.
Nevertheless, the prospect of fighting a more contagious form of the virus comes as the pandemic has been out of control in much of the United States for weeks. California, the most populous state with 40 million, has become the latest hotspot as hospitals in and around Los Angeles report that their intensive care units are full.
Medical experts attribute this past week to the fact that the pandemic has worsened due to colder weather and the failure of many Americans to heed public health warnings to avoid social gatherings and unnecessary travel during the annual holidays.
The result has been an alarming rise in infections and hospitalizations that have tested healthcare systems to the limit, and an increasing death toll in the US, which has so far lost 338,000 lives.
In addition to daily social life in America, the pandemic has stifled the economy and left millions of workers at numbers not seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The first U.S. case of the British variant was announced Tuesday by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. At a news conference, Polis described the patient who was infected as a National Guard soldier in his twenties, who was appointed for a COVID outbreak at a nursing home in Simla, Colorado, on the outskirts of the Denver metropolitan area. to handle.
The patient, who is isolating and recovering at home, has no recent travel history, which dr. Henry Walke, incident manager of the CDC’s COVID response, said it was a sign of person-to-person transmission of the variant within the United States.
The director of the Department of Public Health and Environment in Colorado told reporters that a second member of the National Guard may also have contracted the British variant, although final laboratory confirmation is still awaited.
The new variant has been detected in several European countries, as well as in Canada, Australia, India, South Korea and Japan.
The US government on Monday began demanding that all airline passengers arriving from Britain – including US citizens – test negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours of departure.
The sources told Reuters on Wednesday that the requirements to extend coronavirus testing for international air travelers outside Britain have expanded Coronavirus testing requirements.
Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York, Rich McKay in Atlanta, Keith Coffman in Denver and David Shepardson in Washington; Edited by Leslie Adler and Grant McCool