(Reuters) – A more contagious variant of COVID-19 that swept the UK has been reported in at least five states in the U.S., said the director of the National Institute of Health, Francis Collins, in an interview with the Washington Post on Wednesday.
“Now we have seen the same UK virus in the United States in at least five states and I would be surprised if it doesn’t grow very quickly,” said Collins, adding that, however, it doesn’t seem to be more serious.
Last week, Reuters reported that Florida has become the third known US state to identify such a case, with two other cases identified in Colorado and California.
Scientists say that newly developed vaccines must be equally effective against both variants.
The NIH director said he expects immunizations to be made through pharmacies as soon as the country faces a sudden increase in cases, with the number of vaccinations falling far short of initial targets.
He said in the interview that at least 80% -85% of Americans should receive the vaccine to achieve “herd immunity”. (bit.ly/3opexFt)
The leading infectious disease specialist in the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said in a separate interview that it was unclear what percentage of the population needed to be vaccinated for collective immunity.
“I had originally said 70%, now based on my estimate, it’s probably somewhere between 70% -85%,” said Fauci in an interview with the Washington, DC Economic Club on Wednesday.
“We need to vaccinate enough people so that the dynamics of the outbreak will decrease dramatically,” he added. “I don’t think this will happen until late summer or early fall, if we do it correctly.”
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they administered more than 4.8 million first doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country on Tuesday morning and distributed more than 17 million doses.
Reporting by Vishwadha Chander in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Shounak Dasgupta