After a month of decline in the number of coronavirus cases in the United States, President Joe Biden’s CDC director warned that the increase in mutant coronavirus strains could wipe out all the gains made so far in fighting the pandemic.
“Please listen to me clearly: at this level of cases with the spread of variants, we can completely lose the ground conquered with difficulty”, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, whom Biden appointed to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told reporters on Monday. She noted that new infections increased by 2% in the past week compared to the previous week, a stark contrast to the reduction in numbers in the previous weeks.
Walensky urged states to avoid prematurely suspending COVID-19 restrictions that can help delay or prevent transmission of the virus.
“I am really concerned about reports that more states are reversing the exact public health measures that we recommend to protect people from COVID-19,” explained Walensky. She urged the public to continue wearing masks and following other public health safety measures.
“Ultimately, vaccination is what will get us out of this pandemic,” added Walensky. “To get there, we need to vaccinate many more people.”
Public health experts shared Walensky’s feelings.
“Although it has improved markedly since January, we now have an extraordinarily high level of circulation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus with daily case and mortality rates comparable to last summer’s peak peak,” Dr. Russell Medford, president of the Center for Global Health Center for Coordination of Innovation and Global Health Crisis, he wrote to the Salon. “Under these conditions, we run the real risk of a new and even greater outbreak of coronavirus variants that exhibit greater transmissibility, greater virulence and resistance to vaccines.”
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, agrees with Walensky’s concern.
“Although current vaccines cover the main variants that we have identified so far, there is a risk that a variant will emerge that escapes the vaccine,” explained Benjamin in an email to Salon. “This flight would restore a new outbreak of infectious diseases.”
Dr. Alfred Sommer, dean emeritus and professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Salon that he believes Walensky is “being honest and cautious. It is entirely speculative, but appropriate to be concerned about the emergence of variants ( like (South African variant now in circulation), which will be less sensitive to current vaccines. “He added that this problem can be solved if pharmaceutical companies respond by creating new variants in existing vaccines to deal with mutant strains, although he has noted that production and distribution problems will limit companies’ ability to place the revised vaccines in the public’s arms.
Until then, Sommer argued that people need to follow public health guidelines.
“Get vaccinated, support government investment in tracking and responding to new variants, and be sensitive to the appropriate use of masking and social detachment as recommended,” Sommer told Salon.
Benjamin agreed with Sommer’s opinion, adding that the way to avoid losing the progress made so far in the fight against COVID-19 is to ensure that coronavirus variants cannot replicate. This, in turn, means that they will be unable to create mutant strains that could be more transmissible or avoid vaccines.
“The way to prevent this is to wear a mask, wash your hands and distance yourself socially,” Benjamin told Salon, adding that Americans should also “avoid large crowds until we get effective control of the disease and obtain community immunity through vaccination. “.
Not all medical experts who spoke to the Salon agreed with the CDC director about the variants, although they all emphasized the importance of following public health guidelines, such as wearing masks and social distance. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious physician and professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, told Salon by email that she disagrees with Walensky’s statement.
“All vaccines approved in the United States provide 100 percent protection against severe COVID-19 disease that requires hospitalization, even when tests were conducted in regions where the variants are circulating,” explained Gandhi. She cited as an example how the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is administered in a single dose, stopped 100 percent of COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths in the United States, Latin America and South Africa. South Africans at the time were of variant B.1.351 and 69% of Brazilians were also from a new mutant strain.
“Reinfection with variants that lead to symptomatic infection after vaccination or natural infection is rare,” argued Gandhi, pointing to recent studies.
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