A new, more transmissible variant of the coronavirus first discovered in the UK has been detected in ten U.S. states, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said, warning that it is the dominant circulating variant in the United States can become. by March.
The variant, known as B.1.1.7, is thought to be twice as contagious as the current version of the virus that is spreading in the US, but so far there is no evidence that it causes serious diseases or is transmitted otherwise.
The CDC said Friday its rapid spread will increase the burden on health resources at a time when infections are on the rise, further reducing strained health care resources and increasing the need for better adherence to mitigation strategies such as social distance and mask wear. weekly report on death and illness.
It also increases the percentage of the population that needs to be vaccinated to establish protective herd immunity to control the pandemic, the CDC said.
The British variant is currently found in ten countries, but in only 76 of the 23 million American cases reported so far, it has been diagnosed.
According to CDC scientists, it is likely that the version of the virus is spreading more in the country than is currently reported.
Former FDA chief to introduce vaccines
Elected U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday separately selected David Kessler, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for a senior role in the new government’s efforts to reduce the availability of COVID-19 vaccines promoted, Biden’s transition team said.
The news came when Biden’s team predicted that by next month the US would have around 500,000 deaths as a result of the pandemic, and because the president-elect was due to plans to increase vaccinations.
Kessler, an FDA-led pediatrician and attorney under Presidents George HW Bush and Bill Clinton, will be the scientific officer of the government’s COVID-19 response.
The Biden government intends to reorganize the vaccine distribution efforts that the outgoing President Donald Trump’s administration calls Operation Warp Speed, spokesman Jen Psaki said.
Biden called the explosion of the vaccine for Trump administration a sad failure.
His own plan calls for Congress to spend $ 20 billion on the distribution of vaccines.
“We did not fully fund the COVID response,” Biden’s incoming chief of staff Ron Klain said in a Washington Post interview on Friday.
“We are going to see 500,000 deaths in this country next month,” Klain said.
Kessler was a co-chair of Biden’s advisory board on the pandemic. As head of the FDA, Kessler took the time to approve, cut back on AIDS drugs, and try to regulate the tobacco industry.
His appointment comes at a critical point for the government’s effort to accelerate the development and distribution of coronavirus vaccines and treatments in a country particularly affected by the virus.
Biden has promised to get 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses in his first 100 days in office in Americans.
This rate is more than double the current rate, but will still leave most of the country by the end of April.
The Trump administration’s goal is to give 20 million Americans vaccine doses by 2020, but according to data from the CDC, only 11.1 million shots have been fired since Thursday.
In an effort to expand vaccination efforts, the Trump administration said Tuesday that it is releasing millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses that it has withheld for second shots.
The move was a departure from an earlier strategy to store enough doses to ensure that the required second doses of the vaccines are available.
The Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, approved last month, require two doses.