Fauci sees US take control of pandemic by next fall

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – America’s leading infectious disease specialist Dr Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday he expected America to gain enough herd immunity to COVID-19 through vaccination to regain “some semblance of of normality ”by fall 2021, despite the first setbacks in the deployment of the vaccine.

Fauci made his remarks during an online discussion about the pandemic with California Governor Gavin Newsom, who up front announced that a more infectious variant of the coronavirus originally found in Britain had been detected in his state, a day after the first known American case was documented in Colorado.

Newsom said the B.1.1.7 variant of the coronavirus was confirmed earlier today in a patient in southern California. He did not provide further details. But the California Department of Public Health later said in a statement that the person, a patient from San Diego County, had no known travel history, suggesting the variant is spreading within the community.

Fauci said he was “not surprised,” adding that more cases of the variant would likely surface in the country and that the mutant nature of these viruses is normal.

“It appears that this particular mutation improves the transmission of the virus from one person to another,” he said. However, people infected with previous forms of SARS-CoV-2 “don’t seem to be re-infected with it,” meaning any immunity already acquired “protects against this particular strain,” Fauci added.

He also pointed out that the so-called British variant would not be more serious in the disease it causes and that the newly approved COVID-19 vaccines will prove to be just as effective against it as against known earlier forms of the virus.

The same goes for a second new variant, also more infectious and first reported in South Africa, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Yet the emergence of a more highly transmissible variant could make rapid deployment of vaccinations all the more critical.

President-elect Joe Biden warned on Tuesday that it would take years to vaccinate most Americans, given an initial vaccine distribution rate that is behind the Trump administration’s promises. He called on Congress to approve increased funding for this business.

‘WE WILL MEET’

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Wednesday he was confident the early vaccine distribution problems would be overcome.

“As we move into January, the feeling is that we are going to gain momentum so that we can catch up,” he told Newsom, saying he expected the vaccines to be widely available at large. public on request, by April.

Assuming the massive vaccination campaign progresses as it should through May, June and July, “By the time we get to the start of fall, we’ll have enough herd immunity to really be able to return to some semblance of normalcy.” loud – schools, theaters, sporting events, restaurants, ”Fauci said.

Nonetheless, the prospect of battling a more contagious form of the virus comes as the pandemic has raged largely out of control across much of the United States for weeks. California, the most populous state with 40 million people, has become the last flashpoint, as hospitals in and around Los Angeles report intensive care units full to capacity.

Medical experts attribute a worsening of the pandemic in recent weeks to onset of colder weather and many Americans’ failure to follow public health warnings to avoid social gatherings and unnecessary travel during the holiday season the end of the year.

The result has been an alarming rise in infections and hospitalizations that have pushed healthcare systems to their limits, and a steadily rising death toll in the United States, exceeding the 338,000 lives lost to date across the country. country.

In addition to disrupting daily social life in America, the pandemic has stifled the economy, slowing millions of workers in a number not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The first American case of the British variant was announced Tuesday by Colorado Governor Jared Polis. In a press conference on Wednesday, Polis described the infected patient as a National Guard soldier in his twenties who had been assigned to help deal with a COVID outbreak at a nursing home in Simla, Colorado, in the outskirts of the Denver metro area.

The patient, self-isolating and recuperating at home, has no recent travel history, which Dr. Henry Walke, incident manager for the CDC’s COVID response says, is a sign of person-to-person transmission. person of the variant in the United States.

The director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment told reporters that a second member of the National Guard may also have contracted the British variant, although final confirmation from the lab is still pending.

The new variant has been detected in several European countries, as well as in Canada, Australia, India, South Korea and Japan, among others.

The US government began on Monday requiring all airline passengers arriving from Britain – including US citizens – to test negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours of departure.

The government could expand coronavirus testing requirements for international air travelers beyond Britain as early as next week, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.