When the nation turned the page in its deadliest month since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci made a plea for Americans to take one of the COVID-19 vaccines to help prevent new variants of the virus from emerging .
“You should get vaccinated if it becomes available as soon and as soon as possible,” Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said during a virtual press conference of the White House’s COVID-19 response team. And the reason is … viruses cannot 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 don’t get mutations.
“… you’re not just going to protect individuals from getting diseases, you’re not just going to protect them from infection,” he said, “but you’re going to prevent variants from developing.”
Last week, Fauci warned that the new variants initially identified in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil – and have since been found in the United States – are expected to eventually surpass the number of cases of the original strain of the virus. The British variety has now been found in nearly three dozen US states.
Fauci also said the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is less effective than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, will still be useful in the global fight against the pandemic, especially as it is available in a single dose compared to the two doses needed. for the others.
“A cheap one-time vaccine means an awful lot,” said Fauci.
Earlier in the briefing, Biden’s government announced it had struck a deal to produce the first over-the-counter coronavirus tests.
Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House’s COVID-19 response team, said the $ 30 home tests produced by Australian company Ellume are 95 percent effective at detecting the virus. Results of the tests, approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration in December 2020, are sent to users’ smartphones within 15 minutes.
The government awarded Ellume $ 230 million to ramp up production, Slavitt said, with at least 8.5 million of the test kits available for the United States.
The latest White House public update on the coronavirus comes amid a rising US death toll. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said more than 90,000 Americans died of complications from COVID-19 in January, making it the deadliest month of the pandemic to date.
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