Dr Anthony Fauci said on Friday that new variants of the coronavirus that were initially found in the UK, South Africa and Brazil – and have since been identified in the United States – are expected to persist and eventually exceed the number of cases of the previous strain of the virus.
“We will continue to see the evolution of mutants,” Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, said Friday at a news conference.
The variant first identified in the UK has now been found in 29 US states, according to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Highly contagious variants first identified in South Africa and Brazil have also been found in the United States.
Fauci said vaccinating “as many people as possible, as soon as we can” is the best defense against new variants. “The virus has a playing field to mutate,” he said, explaining that the virus cannot mutate if it is not given a chance to replicate.
“The virus will continue to mutate and will mutate for its own selective benefit,” he said. If COVID-19 is common in a community, it is only a matter of time before the virus mutates, as it will have ample opportunity to “adapt”.
A newly identified strain of the coronavirus found in Southern California could be behind the drastic spike in cases in the region. A study published Jan. 18 found that more than a third of recent COVID-19 patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles were infected with the species, according to a publication summarizing the findings.
“The fact is that if you have a virus that can be more efficiently transmitted than the wild-type in the community, sooner or later it will become more dominant than the wild-type itself by sheer viral dynamics,” Fauci said.
Variants likely affect other American cities, according to Fauci, however sequence efforts are not present to identify them all. Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House’s COVID-19 response team, again called on Congress to approve President Biden’s proposal American rescue plan so that the federal government can scale up sequencing along with other strategies to quell the pandemic.
“We should treat each case as if it were a variant,” Walensky said, noting that “by the time someone has symptoms, gets a test, has a positive result, and we get the sequence, our chance of real case control. and the tracing of contacts has largely disappeared. “
Fauci said federal officials are concerned about a number of variants, most notably the mutation first identified in the UK and shown to be more easily transmitted than the original COVID-19 strain. That characteristic, he said, means that its dominance is inevitable. Current projections show that the variant will “become more dominant than the wild type by March or April,” he said.
“The fundamental principle of getting humans to be vaccinated as quickly and efficiently as possible is always the best way to prevent the further evolution of a mutant. Because if you do that, you prevent replication and replication is essential for mutation.”
In addition to vaccinating as many people as possible with current Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Fauci said federal health officials and vaccine development companies must remain “nimble” to produce variants targeting variants.
“We as the government, the companies, all of us who are in this together, will have to be nimble to adapt easily to make versions of the vaccine that actually specifically target the mutation that is actually occurring at any given time,” he said.
In recent weeks, there have been concerns that the vaccines may be less effective against some variants, especially the highly transmissible South African variant.
US biotech company Novavax said on Thursday that its two-stage COVID-19 vaccine showed an overall efficacy of 89.3% in a large Phase 3 clinical trial in Britain, and remained very effective against a variant that was first identified there. Other results showed it offered less protection against the variant identified in South Africa, but both the company and an outside health expert were still optimistic about the level of protection provided against both new strains.
Fauci also discussed new results from Friday Johnson & Johnson vaccine studies, which showed 66% efficacy overall and 72% in the United States. He acknowledged that the results may seem less impressive compared to the higher overall efficacy of Pfizer and Moderna, but stressed that the vaccine has other benefits, namely its impact on serious illness and ease of single dose administration.
In the United States, South Africa, and Brazil, the overall efficacy for serious diseases was 85%. And in fact, in the study, including the South African isolate, there were essentially no hospitalizations or deaths in the vaccine group, while in the the placebo group were there, ”said Fauci. “So this really tells us that we now have an additional value-added candidate vaccine.”
“This has important potential and real implications at home and abroad because … this one single vaccine you start seeing anywhere between 7 and 10 days after the first and only shot, “Fauci said. It can be kept in a regular refrigerator, is inexpensive, and the company is” capable of making billions of doses. “
The briefing came a day after Fauci said President Joe Biden’s pressure to reopen most schools in 100 days “may not happen.” In an interview with the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association on Thursday, Fauci expressed caution about Mr. Biden’s purpose.
“That may not happen because there could be extenuating circumstances,” Fauci said.
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated Mr Biden’s support for a $ 1.9 trillion COVID-19 aid package to be passed in Congress on Thursday, saying the White House was not interested in splitting it up. of the bill in smaller parts. Some Republicans have objected to the price tag on the bill, and it’s unclear whether it will be able to rally GOP votes.
Psaki said Mr. Biden had reached out to both Republican and Democratic members of Congress to discuss coronavirus relief.