Just when it looks like a light may be coming on at the end of this dark pandemic tunnel, a series of new coronavirus strains appear that are more transmissible, at least partially resistant to vaccines, and which can infect people who have already had COVID . -19.
And they were all found in the United States.
If your hope is fading and increasing your fear, you are not alone. Many of us wonder how these variants will affect the course of the pandemic – especially if it is a sign that we will never be able to catch the virus. Are we going to be socially distant from each other for the rest of our lives?
To find out if this despair is deserving, I contacted epidemiologists, doctors and experts on the infectious diseases. And that’s when I came across the first good news I had heard for a while: None of them are scared.
“I’m not panicking,” he said. Dr. Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety.
While acknowledging that the new variants of SARS-CoV-2 do present challenges, he does not view them as game changers.
“They tell us that we need to keep working hard – and maybe harder – to stop the spread of the virus, but that the song of existence does not have to exist,” he said. “We will come out of this pandemic.”
Although some variants are resistant to first generation COVID-19 vaccines, this does not mean that the vaccines are useless. Dr. Annabelle De St. Mauritius, who leads infection control for UCLA Health.
“Even in years when we can not cope so well with the flu vaccine, we see the benefit of vaccination,” she said. ‘And it’s the same for SARS CoV-2. Although the vaccines are less effective, it is better to get the vaccine than not to get the vaccine. ”
Dr. Adam Lauring, which studies how RNA viruses mutate at the University of Michigan, agrees.
“I know people are worried about the variants. Will the vaccines work too?” he said. ‘But boy! If we have 50 to 70% flu vaccination every year, we are in ecstasy. ”
Breathing a little easier? Here is more what they and other scientists had to say about the new variants and their impact on our ability to end the pandemic.
Are you surprised to see coronavirus variants that are more transmissible or vaccine resistant?
It’s hardly a surprise that the virus has changed over time – that’s what viruses do, De St. Maurice said.
Since the virus makes copies of itself, it is likely to make mistakes. And since December 2019, the virus is making copies of itself in more than 100 million people around the world. All of these infections provided ample opportunity to change, she said.
However, most of the changes are so-called silent mutations. This means that they have no influence on the way the virus repeats, how it spreads or the damage it does to its human hosts.
What scientists did not know ahead of time was when, or even if, a mutation would occur that would significantly affect the trajectory of the pandemic – which would make the virus more transmissible or more resistant to vaccines.
“Everyone knew it was a possibility,” Toner said. But “everyone who said ‘I knew it was going to happen’ should have a good crystal ball.”
We have been informed that the coronavirus is seasonal. Can we still expect the cases to decrease in the spring and summer?
The more people are vaccinated now, the less virus we can expect to see in the summer, even with the new variants in the mix, said Chunhuei Chi, director of the Center for Global Health at Oregon State University.
“The hope is that we can intensify our vaccination, and if a sufficient number of people are vaccinated, it will slow down the spread,” he said.
Toner said he was hopeful that 40% to 50% of Americans would be vaccinated by the beginning of the summer. If this is the case, we can certainly expect cases of coronavirus, hospitalizations and deaths to decrease significantly, along with the possibility that the virus may inhibit additional mutations.
Regardless of the portability of any current or future variant, the experts expect that they will be less distributed in the summer months. In part, this is because our behavior changes when the weather warms up and we can spend more time outside.
“What drives transfer are really gatherings among households, such as during the holidays,” De St. Maurice said. Hanging out outside is safer than getting together indoors, she added.
Does the new variant make it harder to achieve herd immunity?
There is currently no evidence to suggest that, Chi said.
“The fact that they are more contagious increases the urgency of mass vaccinations to create the necessary immunity of the herd to slow the spread,” he said.
Most experts believe that there is some crossover immunity between coronavirus variants, so if you were vaccinated against one version, you would probably have at least partial immunity to others, Toner said.
But if you are asking if SARS-CoV-2 will ever be completely eradicated, the answer is probably no.
Lauring said the coronavirus could possibly act like the flu.
“We can end up in a place where every year there is a time of year where there is a lot of SARS CoV-2, and some people get sick, and other people get very sick, and others die,” he said. . “But that’s not where we are now.”
Toner said he could suggest a future in which we should get a new coronavirus survey every few years. A new vaccine is probably needed less frequently than that for flu, but more often than measles.
Should these new variants change our public health strategy to fight the virus?
The general consensus: not really.
“What we can say after looking at other countries that have seen big nails with the variants is that the big nails were controlled in the same way we controlled our nails – with social distance, wearing masks and avoiding of insiders, “Toner said. .
He added that the variants should serve as a reminder to be vigilant.
“It’s important for us not to be seduced that it’s all over,” he said. “Whether we see a big impact of the variants or not, there will still be rises and flags across the country.”
And just to be clear, we can still defeat this pandemic, right?
Reg, the De St. Maurice said. But we will have to do the work.
“We need to reduce the transmission to prevent the variants from occurring,” she said. “The longer we allow it to mutate, the greater the chance that we have variants that can evade vaccine immunity.”
Toner also expressed certainty that the pandemic is likely to end.
“Even if we did nothing, we would get out of this pandemic,” he said. “It’s really about how fast, at what cost and how many lives are lost.”
In the future, COVID-19 is likely to become a common part of life – a common respiratory disease such as that caused by other coronaviruses that were in circulation before the pandemic began, he said.
“Children are vaccinated for it, adults get periodic boosts or reintroductions every few years, and there may be small outbreaks that make the news known,” he said. “But it will not overwhelm hospitals, and it will not cause loss of life.”