[ad_1]
Vaccination alone will not be able to stop the spread of new coronavirus variants, so people will have to wear masks and use other preventative measures until the fight against COVID-19 is over, according to a new study.
The study, published in Nature’s “Scientific Reports” Friday, follows unpopular new guidelines released by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that recommend that Americans re-mask themselves in areas where the virus is found. increases – even if they are vaccinated.
The team of researchers reportedly applied a mathematical model to the rate of transmission exhibited by the coronavirus pandemic to predict how vaccination efforts may actually encourage a vaccine-resistant mutation in the virus.
Their results aligned with a scientific concept known as “selective pressure,” or the force that causes an organism to evolve. In essence, the team says, a rapid vaccination rate coupled with the loosening of masks and social distancing puts selective pressure on the SARS-CoV-2 virus to evolve.
“We have found that a rapid vaccination rate decreases the likelihood of emergence of a resistant strain,” the researchers wrote. “[But] Counterintuitively, when a relaxation of non-pharmaceutical interventions occurred at a time when most individuals in the population had already been vaccinated, the likelihood of emergence of a resistant strain was greatly increased. “
Therefore, the scientists suggest “that policymakers and individuals should consider maintaining non-pharmaceutical interventions and transmission reduction behaviors throughout the vaccination period.”
“When most people are vaccinated, the vaccine resistant strain has an advantage over the original strain,” said Simon Rella of the Austrian Institute of Science and Technology, one of the researchers in the study. , according to CNN.
“This means that the vaccine resistant strain is spreading more quickly in the population at a time when most people are vaccinated,” he added.
Another scientist, Fyodor Kondrashov, also a member of the Austrian institute, said this is likely the case with the highly infectious Delta variant.
“Generally, the more people are infected, the more likely it is that resistance to the vaccine will emerge. So the more infectious the Delta, the more reason to be concerned,” Kondrashov said. “By having a situation where you vaccinate everyone, a vaccine resistant mutant actually gets a selective advantage.”
The report comes with a “crucial discovery” about the Delta variant that led the CDC to update its mask guidelines. The CDC study reportedly found that the Delta variant produced a similar viral load in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals who had been infected.
“High viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and have raised concerns that, unlike other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta could transmit the virus,” said Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the agency, in a statement.
[ad_2]
Source link