Epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm believes the United States is seeing a “fourth wave” of infections due to variants of the coronavirus that have emerged in recent months.
Osterholm, who served as a member of President Biden’s COVID-19 transitional advisory board, said the variants pose a significant problem, although he stressed that existing vaccines appear to be effective against them.
“I believe that, in a way, we are almost in a new pandemic,” Osterholm told Fox News Sunday presenter Chris Wallace. “The only good news is that current vaccines are effective against this particular variant B.1.1.7.”
Dr. Michael Osterholm, Regent Professor, Chair with McKnight Presidential Endowment in Public Health and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, on the left, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, on the right, announced advances to the COVID-19 tests in Minnesota, Wednesday, April 22, 2020 in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Photo by Glen Stubbe / Star Tribune via Getty Images)
B.1.1.7 is also known as the “British variant”.
Scientists feared that the variant, which spread much more easily than the original coronavirus, could also render newly developed vaccines useless.
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Vaccines have so far proved effective in preventing infection, but Osterholm noted a number of other concerns that this particular variant raises.
One of the main concerns highlighted by Osterholm is that B.1.1.7 appears to be more virulent among children.
“They are now, as children, being infected at the same rate as adults,” explained Osterholm. “They are very effective in transmitting the virus.”
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“In Minnesota alone, in the past two weeks, we had 749 schools with cases,” he said.
Minnesota has 5,123 public and private schools in PK-12, according to GreatSchools.org, which would indicate that 14% of schools in the state reported a case of coronavirus.
Osterholm did not suggest blocking the country, mainly because of “absolute resistance” to any type of blockade.
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“There is no country in the world right now that is seeing a big increase in this B.1.1.7 that it is not blocking. We are the exception,” said Osterholm, although he has not touched any comparison between the US and Europe with regard to vaccine distribution.
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He referred to the variant as a “game changer” and insisted that the focus needs to be to go through the next two to three months – as long as people continue to receive vaccines and follow basic health guidelines, including hand washing, mask wear and social distance.
“Nobody wants to be the person who would die three days before receiving the COVID vaccine. This is what we are trying to avoid now.”