Just when it looked like there might be a light at the end of this dark pandemic tunnel, a set of new strains of coronavirus appears that are more transmissible, at least partially resistant to vaccines, and capable of infecting people who have had COVID -19.
And they were all detected in the United States.
If these events have caused your hope to fade and your fear to increase, you are not alone. Many of us are wondering how these variants will affect the course of the pandemic – particularly if they are a sign that we will never be able to anticipate the virus. Will we be socially distanced from each other for the rest of our lives?
To find out if this despair is deserved, I went to epidemiologists, doctors and specialists in infectious diseases. And that’s when I found the first good news I heard in a while: none of them are freaking out.
“I’m not panicking,” he said. Dr. Eric Toner, senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Although he recognizes that the new variants of SARS-CoV-2 present challenges, he does not consider them a game changer.
“They tell us that we have to continue to work hard – and perhaps more – to stop the virus from spreading, but that existential distress need not exist,” he said. “We are going to get out of this pandemic.”
Although some of the variants are more resistant to the first generation of COVID-19 vaccines, that does not mean that the vaccines are useless, he said. Dr. Annabelle De St. Maurice, which leads pediatric infection control for UCLA Health.
“Even in the years when we haven’t been able to get a good combination with the flu vaccine, we see some benefits of immunization,” she said. “And this is the same for SARS CoV-2. Even though vaccines are less efficient, receiving the vaccine is better than not receiving the vaccine. “
Dr. Adam Lauring, which studies how RNA viruses mutate at the University of Michigan, agreed.
“I know people are concerned about the variants – will the vaccines work too?” he said. “But boy! If we obtained 50% to 70% of the effectiveness of the flu vaccine each year, we would be ecstatic. “
Breathing a little easier? Here is more than they and other scientists have to say about the new variants and their impact on our ability to end the pandemic.
Are you surprised to see variants of the coronavirus that are more transmissible or resistant to the vaccine?
It’s no surprise that the virus has changed over time – that’s what viruses do, said De St. Maurice.
Because the virus makes copies of itself, it is bound to make mistakes. And since December 2019, the virus has made copies of itself in over 100 million people worldwide. All of these infections provided many opportunities for that to change, she said.
However, most of these changes are called silent mutations. This means that they do not affect the way the virus replicates, how it spreads or the damage it inflicts on its human hosts.
What scientists could not know in advance was when, or even if, a mutation would appear that would significantly affect the path of the pandemic – making the virus more transmissible, for example, or more resistant to vaccines.
“Everyone knew it was a possibility,” said Toner. But “anyone who says ‘I knew this was going to happen’ must have a very good crystal ball.”
They said that the coronavirus is seasonal. Can we still expect a decline in cases in the spring and summer?
The more people vaccinated now, the less viruses we can expect to see in the summer, even with the new variants in the mix, he said. Chunhuei Chi, director of the Center for Global Health at Oregon State University.
“The hope is that we can intensify our vaccination and, when an adequate number of people are vaccinated, it will decrease the spread,” he said.
Toner said he hopes that 40% to 50% of Americans will be vaccinated by the beginning of the summer. If so, we can definitely expect coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths to drop significantly – along with opportunities for the virus to find additional mutations.
Regardless of the transmissibility of any current or future variant, experts expect to see less spread in the summer months. This is partly because our behaviors change when the weather warms up and we can spend more time outdoors.
“What drives transmission is really meetings between families, like holidays,” said De St. Maurice. Meeting outdoors is safer than meeting indoors, she added.
Do the new variants make collective immunity more difficult to achieve?
There is currently no evidence to suggest this, said Chi.
However, “the fact that they are more contagious increases the urgency of mass vaccinations to create the herd immunity needed to slow the spread,” he said.
Most experts believe that there is some cross-immunity between coronavirus variants, so if you have been vaccinated against one version, you are likely to have at least partial immunity to others, Toner said.
But if you’re wondering if SARS-CoV-2 will ever be completely eradicated, the answer is probably no.
Lauring said the coronavirus could behave like the flu.
“We can end up in a place where every year there is a time of year when there is a lot of SARS CoV-2 around, and some people get sick, others get very sick and others die,” he said. But it will not be where we are now. “
Toner said he can imagine a future in which we will need to get a new coronavirus vaccine every few years or so. A new vaccine would probably be needed less often than flu, but more often than measles.
Should these new variants change our public health strategy to fight the virus?
The general consensus: not really.
“What we can say after looking at other countries that have seen large peaks with the variants is that these large peaks were controlled in the same way that we control our peaks – with social distance, wearing masks and avoiding internal crowds,” said Toner.
He added that the variants should serve as a reminder to remain vigilant.
“It is important for us not to be seduced that all this is over,” he said. “Whether or not we see a major impact from the variants, there will continue to be peaks and outbreaks across the country.”
And just to be clear, we can still win this pandemic, right?
Okay, said De St. Maurice. But we will have to work.
“We need to reduce transmission to prevent variants from occurring,” she said. “The longer we let him mutate, the more likely we are to have variants that can escape the vaccine’s immunity.”
Toner also expressed certainty that the pandemic is doomed to end.
“Even if we did nothing, we would get out of this pandemic,” he said. “It really is a question of how fast, at what cost and how many lives will be lost.”
In the future, COVID-19 is likely to become a normal part of life – a common respiratory illness like those caused by other coronaviruses circulating before the pandemic began, he said.
“Children will be vaccinated against it, adults will receive periodic boosters or revaccination every few years, and there may be small outbreaks that come out in the news,” he said. “But it will not overburden hospitals, it will not cause major loss of life.”
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.