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Health experts have identified at least three variants of the coronavirus in the United States which appear to originate from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil. While the average rate of cases in the United States has declined in recent times, officials fear these variants could cause another surge.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that health experts in South Africa had found that the variant had such a high rate of reinfection than the previous infection. didn’t seem to protect people.
Experts hope the rise in vaccine delivery will mitigate the risk of new variants fueling a new surge across the United States.
Even though current vaccines don’t offer the same level of protection against variants, they can protect against serious illnesses, including hospitalization and death, Fauci said. They could also prevent the variants from becoming more dominant.
“Viruses cannot mutate if they don’t replicate. And if you stop their replication by vaccinating widely and not giving the virus an open playing field to continue responding to the pressures you put on it, you don’t. ‘will not get transfers,’ Fauci said in a virtual press briefing with the White House’s Covid-19 response team.
“You need to get the vaccine as soon as it becomes available as quickly and as quickly as possible across the country.”
More transmissible variants spread across the United States
The variant identified in the UK has already found its way into several US states.
On Monday, the Iowa Department of Health said three cases had been identified. Authorities have contacted those infected to monitor their health and notify those with whom they have been in close contact.
“State and local public health officials are conducting further epidemiological investigation to gather more details on the disease, travel history and potential exposures,” the IDPH spokesperson told CNN, Sarah Ekstrand.
Georgian officials have identified 19 cases in the Atlanta metro area, the health ministry said on Monday. The cases concern people aged 15 to 61 years.
The first known case of the variant in South Carolina has been identified in an adult in the Lowcountry area who has traveled overseas, the agency said in a statement on Saturday.
And although cases of Covid-19 have declined steadily in Colorado, the state has identified 13 cases of the British strain, Colorado epidemiologist Dr Rachel Herlihy told reporters at a press conference Zoom.
The state is “working hard” to make the distribution of a vaccine against the virus fair and transparent, said Brigadier General Scott Sherman of the Colorado National Guard.
32 million doses of vaccine administered in the United States
Vaccine distribution and administration has been slow, but officials hope to speed up the pace of getting doses to states and into the arms of populations to bypass the pandemic and growing variants.
So far, more than 32 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the United States, with 26 million people having received at least one dose and nearly 6 million being fully vaccinated, according to data released Monday by the United States Centers for Disease Control. and Prevention.
Michigan and North Carolina have administered more than a million doses of the vaccine, officials said.
“Reaching this milestone is great news for our families, frontline workers and small business owners, but there is still work to be done,” said Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. “My administration is working closely with the federal government to help us get the supplies we need to reach our goal and get back to the normalcy we all dream of. I ask Michiganders for patience as our frontline workers work around the clock to administer the vaccines.
“We have long expected that most Minnesotans get vaccinated where they are used to receiving their health care,” Walz said in a press release. “But not everyone has a doctor or pharmacy they’re familiar with. That’s why we’ve built a reliable network of different ways Minnesotans can access the vaccine.”
People previously infected with Covid-19 may only need one dose of vaccine, study finds
Those who have already been infected with coronavirus and hope to avoid re-infection may only need one dose of a vaccine instead of the two given to most, according to a study published Monday.
People who were previously infected with the virus tended to have equal or higher antibody levels than people who had received both doses but were never infected as well as more widespread side effects after the first dose , wrote the authors of the study, which was not peer reviewed.
The authors argue that “changing the policy to give these individuals a single dose of vaccine would not negatively impact their antibody titers, save them unnecessary pain, and release many urgently needed doses of vaccine.” “
“Ongoing follow-up studies will show whether these early differences in immune responses hold up over time,” they wrote.
The CDC says people should be vaccinated even if they had Covid-19 because it is not yet clear how long the antibody protection lasts.
CNN’s Andrea Diaz, Deidre McPhillips, Christina Maxouris, Keith Allen, Gisela Crespo, Laurie Ure, Rebekah Riess, Amanda Sealy and Michael Nedelman of CNN contributed to this report
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