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He was first spotted in Colorado at the end of December, said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Biden.
“Since then, it has been detected in 50 jurisdictions in the United States, and currently accounts for probably around 20-30% of infections in that country. And that number is on the rise,” Fauci said.
“It is of concern that there is about a 50% increase in transmission with this particular variant which has been documented in the UK and there is likely an increase in the severity of the disease if infected with this variant, ”he said.
But vaccines appear to protect well against B.1.1.7 and treatments such as monoclonal antibodies also appear to work against this particular variant, Fauci said.
This makes it more important than ever to get people vaccinated quickly, he said.
“The way we can counter 1.1.7, which is a growing threat in our country, is to do two things: get as many people vaccinated as quickly and as quickly as possible with the vaccine that we know works against.” this variant and, finally, to implement the public health measures that we talk about all the time … mask, physically distance and avoid gathering places, especially indoors, ”he said.
Vaccines appear to protect against variant B.1.1.7
The three vaccines that have so far obtained emergency use clearance from the United States Food and Drug Administration appear to protect people well against B.1.1.7.
There is less evidence for the vaccine manufactured by the Janssen vaccine arm of Johnson & Johnson, although it was tested in the United States after the circulation of B.1.1.7 began.
BioNTech and Moderna have both helped coordinate multiple tests of their variant vaccines.
Ugur Sahin of BioNTech and colleagues tested the blood of 40 volunteers immunized with the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine against laboratory versions of variant B.1.1.7.
The virus could acquire more mutations
What worried them was if more mutations were acquired by the virus. Several variants worry doctors, including the B.1.351 variant seen for the first time in South Africa and the P.1 variant which is now common in Brazil. Both carry a mutation known as E484K that appears to significantly elude the body’s immune response.
“Worryingly, we have shown that there are several B.1.1.7 sequences in the UK carrying E484K with early evidence of transmission as well as independent acquisitions,” they wrote.
Several experiments indicate that B.1.351 and P.1. variants can escape the immune response much more easily by vaccines and also by certain monoclonal antibody treatments, which deploy immune system proteins designed in the laboratory to stimulate the immune response.
Few experiments have been done with the more recently licensed Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but it was tested in the United States after B.1.1.7 began to spread; in South Africa, after B.1.351, this was already the most common variant; and in Brazil after the generalization of P.1.
While it was less effective against moderate illness in South Africa and Brazil than in the United States, it nevertheless strongly protected people against serious illness, hospitalizations, and death in clinical trials.
Viruses are constantly mutating, and some of the mutations have settled in variants that have appeared in the United States, notably in California and New York. The changes they make include some of the changes that make B.1.351 and P.1 so much more dangerous than B.1.1.7. So Fauci and the CDC say it’s even more important to get as many people vaccinated as possible before these variants can spread.
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