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 – they must persist and eventually outnumber the cases of the previous strain of the virus.
“We will continue to see the evolution of the mutants,” said Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist, at a news conference on Friday.
The variant first identified in the UK it has been found in 29 U.S. states, according to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Highly contagious variants identified for the first time in South Africa and Brazil were also found in the United States.
Fauci said that vaccinating “as many people as possible, as quickly as possible” 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 doesn’t have a chance to replicate.
“The virus will continue to mutate and will mutate for its own selective advantage,” he said. If COVID-19 prevails in a community, it is only a matter of time before the virus mutates, as ample “opportunity for adaptation” is given.
A newly identified strain of coronavirus prevalent in Southern California may be behind the dramatic increase in cases in the region. A study released on January 18 found that more than a third of recent COVID-19 patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles were infected with the strain, according to a statement summarizing their findings.
“The fact is that when you have a virus that is able to transmit more efficiently than the wild type in the community, sooner or later by the pure viral dynamics itself, it will become more dominant than the wild type” said Fauci.
The variants are likely to affect other U.S. cities, according to Fauci, but sequencing efforts are not in place to identify them all. Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House COVID-19 response team, again asked Congress to approve President Biden’s proposal American Rescue Plan so that the federal government can extend the sequencing along with other strategies to contain the pandemic.
“We should treat each case as if it were a variant,” said Walensky, noting that “the moment someone has symptoms, tests, has a positive result and we get the sequence, our opportunity to do a real case control and contact tracking has virtually disappeared. “
Fauci said that federal authorities are concerned about a number of variants, in particular the mutation first identified in the UK, which has been shown to be more easily transmitted than the original COVID-19 strain. This feature, he said, means that your dominance is inevitable. Current projections show that the variant “will become more dominant than the wild type” in March or April, he said.
“The fundamental principle of vaccinating people as quickly and efficiently as possible will always be the best way to prevent the future evolution of any mutant. Because when you do that, you avoid replication, and replication is essential to the mutation.”
In addition to vaccinating as many people as possible with current Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Fauci said that federal health officials and vaccine companies will need to remain “nimble” to produce versions aimed at variants.
“We, as a government, the companies, all of us who are together in this, will have to be nimble to adjust readily to make versions of the vaccine that really are specifically targeted to any mutation that really prevails at any given time,” he said.
In recent weeks, there have been concerns that vaccines might be less effective against some variants, South Africa’s highly transmissible variant in particular.
The American biotechnology company Novavax said on Thursday that its two-dose COVID-19 vaccine showed an overall effectiveness of 89.3% in a large Phase 3 clinical trial in Britain, and remained highly effective against a variant first identified there. Other results showed that it offered less protection against the variant identified in South Africa, but both the company and an external health specialist were still optimistic about the level of protection provided against the two new strains.
Fauci on Friday also discussed new results of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine trials, which showed an overall effectiveness of 66% and 72% in the United States. He acknowledged that the results may seem less impressive compared to the greater overall effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna, but stressed that the vaccine has other advantages, namely, its impact on serious illnesses and the ease of administration of its single dose.
“In the United States, South Africa and Brazil, the overall effectiveness for serious illness was 85%. And in fact, in the study that included the South African isolate, there were essentially no hospitalizations or deaths in the vaccine group, while in the placebo group there was, “said Fauci.” So this really tells us that we now have an additional candidate vaccine for added value. “
“This has important potential and real implications nationally and globally because … this is a single shot vaccine which starts to see effectiveness anywhere from 7 to 10 days after the first and only injection, “said Fauci. It can be stored in a regular refrigerator, it is cheap and the company is” capable of producing doses in the billions. “
The briefing came a day after Fauci said that pressure from President Joe Biden to reopen most schools in 100 days “may not happen”. In an interview with the American Teachers’ Federation and the National Education Association on Thursday, Fauci expressed caution about Biden’s goal.
“This may not happen because there may be mitigating circumstances,” said Fauci.
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated on Thursday Biden’s support for a $ 1.9 trillion COVID-19 aid package to be approved in Congress, and said the White House I was not interested in dividing the project into smaller parts. Some Republicans have refused the bill’s price and it is unclear whether it will be able to garner votes from the Republican Party.
Psaki said Biden contacted Republican and Democratic members of Congress to discuss coronavirus relief.