The former COVID-19 variant in New York infects people who have already had the virus or even been vaccinated, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration said Sunday.
Dr Scott Gottlieb said it remains unclear whether the COVID-19 variant, known as B.1.526, leads to viral congestion in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.
“What we do not understand with 1,526 is whether people become infected with it again and whether people who may have been vaccinated now become infected with it,” Gottlieb said Margaret Brennan, anchor at CBS, “Face the Nation.”
The New York variant contains a mutation similar to the South African variant B.1.351, which has been shown “in certain cases” to re-infect people who have already had the bug, Gottlieb said.
‘The question is whether [B.1.526] is responsible for some of the increases we are currently seeing in New York, and whether this is the beginning of a new outbreak in the city, ‘he said.
The former Trump administration official said public health experts currently do not have enough information to draw clear conclusions.
He called on the CDC to work with officials in New York to identify potential coronavirus re-infections associated with B.1.526, which he warned were likely to occur more than we could detect.
“They need to be aggressively marketed to physicians and ask physicians to come forward and report cases when they see situations where people were previously infected with COVID may become infected again,” he said of the federal agency.
“We do not know that this is happening, but anecdotally some doctors are reporting it now, and it may explain why you are experiencing a surge in cases.”
Gottlieb said the federal government’s vaccination effort should serve as a “backstop” against another spate of COVID-19 cases, but warned that the pressure to reopen officials in New York and other states, to an ‘uptick’ ‘in cases can lead.
“We took our foot off the brake a little too early. March is always going to be a difficult month. “People want to lean forward, but we really had to wait until April,” he said.
“The fact that we have done it now probably means that we are probably going plateau, maybe we will see an increase in certain parts of the country.”
COVID-19 variants, including B.1.526, are responsible for more than half of the new cases of coronavirus in New York, city health officials said earlier this month.
On Saturday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the city’s first confirmed case of the Brazilian P.1 variant, which could make vaccinations like the New York variant less effective.
“Although supplementary research is justified, Oxford University researchers recently released non-peer-reviewed data suggesting that the P.1 variant is less resistant to current vaccines than originally thought,” the governor’s office said. said.