US Coronavirus: ‘Healthy, young’ Americans are likely to receive Covid-19 vaccine between mid and late summer, says expert

US Coronavirus: ‘Healthy, young’ Americans are likely to receive Covid-19 vaccine between mid and late summer, says expert

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“The best way to prevent the emergence of new variants is to do all the things we’ve been talking about for months,” infectious disease specialist Dr. Celine Gounder told CNN on Sunday night. “The more you let the virus spread, the more it mutates and the more variants you have.”

But the United States continues to add an impressive number of cases daily and faces several major challenges when it comes to vaccines. States say they do not have enough doses, and the director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said on Sunday that there was a lack of information about the supply.

“I would say that one of the biggest problems now is that I can’t say how much vaccine we have,” Walensky told Fox News. “If I can’t tell you, then I can’t tell the governors and I can’t tell the state health officials.”

“If they don’t know how much vaccine they are getting, not just this week, but the next week and the week after, they can’t plan.”

It will probably take months for the vaccine to be widely available to the American public, said Gounder, who is also a former member of the Covid-19 advisory board for the Biden transition.

“It is probably mid-summer, late summer, before the average healthy young American has access to vaccination,” Gounder told CNN on Sunday.

Send us your questions to President Biden’s Covid-19 team

US should raise its vaccination target, says expert

But while the deployment was slower than many experts expected, the director of the National Institutes of Health says it is now not as bad as some are making it out to be.

“We are now averaging nearly a million doses a day going into the arms, and this is a very good path to get where President Biden wants to go,” said Dr. Francis Collins to MSNBC on Saturday.

Send us your questions to President Biden's Covid-19 team
Biden had previously promised to manage 100 million kicks in his first 100 days in office – a goal that was criticized by some as too modest.

“We need to do better than a million injections a day,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine at George Washington University, told CNN on Sunday.

Most injections given today are first doses, explained Reiner.

“But as we move forward, more and more injections each day will be the second vaccination, so the number of new vaccinations will start to drop until we reach a point in the not too distant future, where every day the vaccines that are given 50% follow-up and 50% new vaccinations. “

“We need to do better. We need to vaccinate about two million people a day. That should be the goal,” added Reiner.

Agencies increasing surveillance of the variant

Meanwhile, Walensky also said on Sunday that the CDC and other agencies are intensifying surveillance and studies of the new variants so that “we can monitor these variants, as well as monitor” the impact they may have on vaccines.

The variant called B.1.1.7 – first identified in the United Kingdom – has already been detected in more than 20 states and, according to the CDC, is more easily transmitted. Dr. Anthony Fauci said it is possible that it could also be more harmful.
The CDC is reviewing new data that suggests that the coronavirus variant identified in the UK may be more deadly

“We need to assume now that what has been circulating predominantly in the UK has a certain degree of increase in what we call virulence, meaning the virus’s power to do more damage, including death,” Fauci told CBS on Sunday.

Studies so far suggest that vaccines will protect against variant B.1.1.7. But at least two studies have found another variant – first detected in South Africa – could pose a problem for vaccines.

This variant has not yet been detected in the United States, but “we need to greatly expand our genomic surveillance,” said Fauci.

“We know it was not at the level we would like, but there is a lot of movement now at the CDC level, including some contributions from NIH and other organizations, to dramatically increase what we call genomic surveillance. ”

‘We need to be ready’ for more virus changes

For many experts, the variants are worrying, but not surprising.

These coronavirus variants are keeping scientists awake at night

The biggest lesson to be learned is that the virus will continue to change – and the United States needs to be ready for it, Dr. Vivek Murthy, a Biden nominee for US Surgeon General, told ABC on Sunday.

“We are in a race against these variants, viruses are interchanged and it is up to us to adapt and ensure that we are ahead,” he said.

Murthy said that this means that there must be much better surveillance so that variants can be identified when they arise, that public health measures must be doubled and that there should be greater investment in treatment strategies.

“Above all, this means that we have to invest a lot more in testing and tracking contacts, because they will also be essential,” added Murthy.

CNN’s Naomi Thomas and Lauren Mascarenhas contributed to this report.

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