WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. health officials believe that the coronavirus mutation that set off alarms in parts of Britain is no more capable of causing serious illness or being resistant to vaccines than the strain that afflicts people in the United States, but it still has to be taken “very seriously,” said the government’s leading infectious disease expert on Sunday.
Dr. Anthony Fauci endorsed the decision by the American authorities to require negative COVID-19 tests before allowing people from Britain to enter the United States. He refused to consider whether that action should have been taken earlier. He said that the variant strain is something “to be followed very carefully” and “we are looking at it very intensely now”
He said: “Does it make someone sicker? Is it a more serious virus in the sense of virulence? And the answer is: it doesn’t seem like that. “British officials are telling their American colleagues that it looks like the vaccines being launched will be strong enough to handle the new variant, but, said Fauci,” we will do the studies ourselves. “
Fauci said the United States is in a critical phase of the pandemic, with the worst likely to lie ahead. He predicted that the general population would be largely immunized in late March or early April – in addition to frontline workers, the elderly and some other segments of the population with vaccine priority.
Fauci spoke about CNN’s “State of the Union”.