US steps up surveillance, study of coronavirus variants

WASHINGTON: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is stepping up efforts to track coronavirus mutations to ensure COVID-19 vaccines and treatments stay ahead of new disease variants until the collective immunity is achieved, the CDC chief said on Sunday (Jan. 24).

Dr Rochelle Walensky spoke about the implications of the rapidly evolving virus during a Fox News interview on Sunday as the number of Americans known to have been infected approached 25 million, with more than 417,000 dead, just over a year after the first U.S. case of COVID-19 was documented.

Walensky, who took over as CDC director last Wednesday, the day President Joe Biden was sworn in, also said the immediate biggest culprit for the slow vaccine delivery was a worsened supply crisis by the inventory confusion inherited from the Trump administration.

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“The fact that we don’t know today, five days after starting this administration and weeks after starting the planning, how much vaccine we have only gives you an idea of ​​the challenges we have left.” , she told Fox News on Sunday.

Biden’s transition team was largely excluded from government deliberations on vaccine deployment for weeks after being elected, with then-President Donald Trump refusing to concede defeat and allow the administration inbound to access the information needed to prepare for government.

Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, said in a separate interview on NBC’s Meet the Press that a plan to distribute the vaccine, especially beyond nursing homes and hospitals, “didn’t really exist when we entered the White House “.

Walensky said she was confident the government would resolve supply issues soon and would continue to dramatically increase vaccine production and distribution by the end of March.

Uncertainty over immediate supplies, however, will hamper efforts at national and local levels to plan ahead for the number of vaccination sites, staff, and appointments to be set up in the interim, exacerbating shortages. in the short term, she said.

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RACE AGAINST VARIANTS

Vaccination has become increasingly critical with the recent emergence of several variants of coronavirus considered to be more transmissible, and in the case of a strain first detected in Britain, possibly more deadly.

“We are now stepping up our monitoring of these and our study of them,” Walensky said, adding that the CDC was collaborating with the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and even the Pentagon.

The goal, she said, is to monitor “the impact of these variants on vaccines, as well as our therapies,” as the virus continues to mutate as it spreads.

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Until vaccines can confer ‘herd’ immunity to the population, mask-wearing and social distancing remain vital to ‘decrease the amount of virus that circulates, and therefore decrease the amount of variants that exist. Said Walensky.

Although British officials warned on Friday that the so-called British variant of the coronavirus, already detected in at least 20 US states, was associated with a higher level of mortality, scientists said existing vaccines still appeared to be effective against him.

They fear, however, that a more contagious South African variant could reduce the effectiveness of current vaccines and show resistance to three therapeutic antibodies developed to treat COVID-19 patients. The similarities between the South African variant and one identified in Brazil suggest that the Brazilian variety may also resist antibody treatment.

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“We are in a race against these variants,” Vivek Murthy, nominated by Biden to be the next US surgeon general, said Sunday on ABC’s This Week Sunday show.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist, said in late December that he was optimistic the United States could gain sufficient herd immunity against COVID to regain “some semblance of normalcy” by the time. fall 2021.

But Murthy said getting herd immunity before the start of a new school year in September was “an ambitious goal.”

Nonetheless, Murthy suggested the government could exceed Biden’s goal of administering 100 million vaccines in the first 100 days of his presidency, telling ABC News, “It’s a floor, it’s not a ceiling”.

Fauci, appearing separately on CBS News’ Face the Nation, said the target of 100 million shots includes people who may have received both injections of the two-dose vaccines and those who received only the first. vaccine.

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