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As COVID-19 cases continue to rise nationwide, fueled largely by the highly contagious delta variant, the country’s top infectious disease expert has warned in a new interview that an even more deadly strain might be possible.
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to the president, said in an interview with McClatchy on Wednesday that the virus had “ample” time to develop into a more dangerous variant. .
“If another one comes along who has an equally high transmission capacity but is also a lot more serious, then we could really be in trouble,” Fauci said. “People who don’t get vaccinated mistakenly think it’s just them. But this is not the case. It is also for everyone.
As the virus continues to spread in unvaccinated areas of the country, it has more opportunities to mutate, opening up the possibility that it may escape vaccines.
“What we’re seeing, because of this increased transmissibility, and because we have about 93 million people in this country who are eligible to get vaccinated who don’t get vaccinated – is that you have a pool. important to vulnerable people, ”said Dr. Fauci said.
The director of NIAID said “we are very fortunate” that the vaccines are working well against the delta variant.
“If we don’t crush the epidemic to the point where the overwhelming proportion of the population is vaccinated, then what will happen is that the virus will continue to smolder from fall through winter, causing it to will give ample chance to get a variant which, quite frankly, we’re very fortunate that the vaccines we have now work very well against the variants – especially against serious illnesses. ”
“There could be a variant that persists and can rule out the delta,” he added.
Fauci reiterated these concerns in an interview with ABC News’ “Good Morning America” on Thursday, noting that the United States will see more variants that escape vaccines if the country does not contain community spread.
“It will happen,” Dr Fauci told GMA presenter George Stephanopoulos, “if we don’t get good control over the spread of the community, that’s why my colleagues and I keep repeating , it’s very important to get as many people vaccinated as possible. ”
“People who say, ‘I don’t want to get the vaccine because it’s me and I’m going to worry about myself, I’m not impacting anyone else’, it just isn’t the case, ”he added.
“And when you give it ample opportunity to mutate, sooner or later you may get another variant, and it’s possible that that variant is in some ways worse than the already very difficult variant we’re dealing with now, which is a major problem reason why you want to completely suppress the circulation of the virus in the community, ”he said.
Dr Fauci also warned that the United States could see up to 200,000 cases of COVID per day in the fall.
“Remember, just a few months ago we had around 10,000 cases a day,” Fauci said. “I think you’re probably going to end up with between 100,000 and 200,000 cases.”
As of August 3, the current 7-day moving average of cases was 89,463, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr Fauci told McClatchy he hoped the full Food and Drug Administration approval of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines would go a long way in addressing vaccine reluctance, but warned that A “bump” in immunization rates would not immediately mitigate the rise in immunization rates. Case of covid.
“Even if we vaccinate everyone today, we are not going to see an effect until mid-September to the end of September,” he said.
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