(Newser)
– Coronavirus will continue to turn into new variants, said Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday, unless we reach vaccination levels so high that the new strains have nowhere to go. “Mutations occur because the virus has a playing field, so to speak, to mutate,” he said, Hill reports. “If you stop this and stop replication, viruses cannot mutate.” It is another reason to increase vaccination. To do this, we “will have to be nimble to be able to readily adjust to make versions of the vaccine that are actually specifically targeted to any mutation that is actually traveling at a given time,” said Fauci at a White House briefing. In reinforcing the need for masking and social detachment, Andy Slavitt, a counselor with the Biden coronavirus, said: “We are not going to be such educated hosts for this virus.”
Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist, called the emergence of coronavirus mutations “an alert for all of us.” To identify new variants quickly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are expanding their genomic sequencing efforts. For now, said director Rochelle Walensky, each new case must be treated as if it were caused by a new strain. “The moment someone has symptoms, gets tested, has a positive result and we get the sequence, our opportunity to do a real case control and contact tracking is gone,” she said. Fauci expressed hope that children will be able to start receiving vaccines in the summer, according to the NPR, after studies on its effectiveness have been completed. President Biden wants most schools to reopen in three months and he asked for $ 130 billion to help make that possible. (The UK variant killed someone in the USA.)