Dr. Anthony Fauci said the new COVID-19 mutation that has spread across the UK is likely already in the US – and may even have originated here, according to a top virologist – but does not appear to affect the ‘protective nature’ of the vaccines being used.
“When you see something that’s pretty common in a place like the UK – there are mutations we see in South Africa too – and given the travel around the world, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is there,” Fauci said Judy Woodruff of PBS Newshour.
“If we start looking for it, we’ll find it,” he said, adding that “you have to make that assumption” the mutated bug is in the US.
“Certainly, it is still not the most common, as it seems to have assumed the prevailing nature in the UK,” said Fauci, the director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Monday.
“But we’re going to look for it now, and I’m sure sooner or later we’ll run into it and find it,” added the country’s top infectious disease expert.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, joined a number of other infectious disease experts who said the variant may not even have originated in the UK.
‘It may well be here. Maybe it even started here. Sequencing in the US is so sporadic, ”Luban said according to The Washington Post.
Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security, said: “It makes sense that it was first discovered in the UK as they probably have the best surveillance program in the world.
“It wouldn’t shock me at all to find out that it is also circulating in the US,” she added, the paper reported.
The experts suggested the new strain was identified first in the UK because the country has a strong monitoring system that has studied tens of thousands of genomic sequences from viral samples, according to the report.
The US has lagged behind in sequencing and does not have the same level of virus surveillance, The Washington Post reported.
Fauci said that since the bug that causes COVID-19 is an RNA virus, it tends to mutate a lot.
“Most mutations have no functional relevance,” he said. ‘He has the suggestion that this makes it easier for the virus to spread.
‘We are still looking for evidence to prove or deny that. But let’s say it actually makes the virus more transmissible, even though it hasn’t been proven yet, ”continued Fauci.
“It doesn’t seem to affect virulence or what we call virus lethality at all. It does not make people sicker. And it doesn’t seem to affect the protective nature of the vaccines we currently use, ”he said.
“So it’s something that you take seriously, you monitor it, and you run tests to determine if there is more functional relevance than we seem to believe,” added Fauci.
The top doctor also said he thinks a travel ban from the UK is “perhaps premature”.
“I don’t think such a draconian approach is necessary. I think we should seriously consider the possibility of getting people tested before they come here from the UK, ”said Fauci.
“But I don’t think there is enough evidence at this point to block essentially every trip from the UK, but seriously to consider the possibility that you might want people coming here to be tested within a certain time frame, you know , 24, 34 or 76 hours before getting on a plane to get to the United States, ”he added.
Tuesday morning, Fauci will receive the shot from Moderna alongside Secretary of Health Alex Azar, director of the National Institutes of Health Francis Collins, and frontline staff at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the Moderna vaccine Friday, making it the second approved inoculation for the global pandemic.
A previous vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech was approved by the FDA on Dec. 11.