To date, health experts have identified at least three variants of the coronavirus, identified by the countries from which they appeared to originate: the UK, South Africa and Brazil.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that health experts in South Africa have seen the variant there have such a high rate of reinfection that previous infection did not seem to protect people.
While current vaccines don’t provide the same level of protection against the variants, they can protect against serious illnesses, including hospitalization and death, Fauci said. They can also prevent variants from becoming more dominant.
“Viruses can’t mutate if they don’t replicate. And if you stop their replication by vaccinating on a large scale and don’t give the virus an open playing field to keep responding to the pressure you put on it, you won’t get mutations,” says Fauci said in a virtual newsletter with the White House Covid-19 response team.
“You need to get vaccinated if it becomes available nationwide as soon as possible.”
More transferable variants spread across the US.
The variant identified in the UK has already made its way to several US states.
On Monday, the Iowa Department of Health said three cases have been identified. Officials have contacted the infected to monitor their health and to notify those with whom they have been in close contact.
“State and local public health officials are conducting additional epidemiological research to gather more details about illness, travel history and potential exposures,” IDPH spokesman Sarah Ekstrand told CNN.
Georgia officials have identified 19 cases in the Atlanta metro, the Health Department said Monday. The cases are among people aged 15 to 61 years.
The first known case of the variant in South Carolina was identified in an adult from the Lowcountry region who was traveling internationally, the agency said in a statement Saturday.
And while Covid-19 cases in Colorado have been steadily declining, the state has identified 13 cases of the British species, Colorado epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy, to reporters at a Zoom press conference.
The state is “working hard” to make the distribution of a vaccine against the virus fair and transparent, said Brigadier General Scott Sherman of the Colorado National Guard.
32 million vaccine doses administered in the US.
The distribution and delivery of vaccines has been slow, but officials hope to accelerate the pace of getting doses to states and into people’s arms to get around the pandemic and its growing variants.
To date, more than 32 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the United States, with 26 million people receiving at least one dose and nearly 6 million fully vaccinated, according to data published Monday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control . and prevention.
Both Michigan and North Carolina have administered more than a million vaccine doses, officials said.
“Reaching this milestone is good news for our families, frontline workers and small business owners, but there is still more work to be done,” said Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. “My government is working closely with the federal government to help us get the supply we need to achieve our goal and return to the standard we all crave. I ask for patience from Michiganders as our frontline workers continue to working around the clock to administer vaccines. “
“We have long planned that most minnesotans get vaccinated in the places where they are used to getting their health care,” Walz said in a statement. “But not everyone has a doctor or pharmacy they know. That’s why we’ve built a trustworthy network of different ways Minnesota Minnesota will get access to the vaccine.”
People previously infected with Covid-19 may only need one dose of vaccine, research suggests
Those already infected with the coronavirus and hoping to avoid reinfection may only need one dose of a vaccine instead of the two being given to most, according to a study posted Monday.
People previously infected with the virus tended to have antibody levels at or above those of people who received both doses but were never infected, as well as more common side effects after the first dose, the study authors wrote. , which has not been peer-reviewed.
The authors claim that “changing the policy of giving these individuals only one dose of vaccine would not adversely affect their antibody titres, save them from unnecessary pain, and release many urgently needed vaccine doses.”
“Ongoing follow-up studies will reveal whether these early differences in immune responses persist over time,” they wrote
The CDC says people should be vaccinated even if they have Covid-19, because it’s still unclear how long antibody protection lasts.
CNN’s Andrea Diaz, Deidre McPhillips, Christina Maxouris, Keith Allen, Gisela Crespo, Laurie Ure, Rebekah Riess, Amanda Sealy and Michael Nedelman contributed to this report