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Just when it looked like there might be a light at the end of this dark pandemic tunnel, comes a slew of new strains of coronavirus that are more transmissible, at least partially resistant to vaccines, and capable of infecting people. who have already had COVID -19.
And they’ve all been detected in the United States.
If these developments cause your hope to vanish and your fear to vanish, you are not alone. Many of us wonder how these variants will affect the course of the pandemic – especially, if they are a sign that we can never get ahead of the virus. Are we going to be socially estranged from each other for the rest of our lives?
To find out if this desperation is justified, I contacted epidemiologists, doctors and infectious disease experts. And that’s where I encountered the first good news I’ve heard in a while: neither of them panic.
“I am not in panic mode,” said Dr Eric Toner, principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
While he acknowledged that the new variants of SARS-CoV-2 pose challenges, he does not view them as game changers.
“They tell us we have to keep working hard – and maybe harder – to stop the spread of the virus, but that existential angst doesn’t have to exist,” he said. “We will come out of this pandemic.”
While some of the variants are more resistant to the first generation of COVID-19 vaccines, that doesn’t mean the vaccines are useless, said Dr. Annabelle De St. Maurice, who heads pediatric infection control for UCLA Health.
“Even the years when we don’t get a good match with the flu shot, we see some benefit from the vaccination,” she said. “And it’s the same with SARS CoV-2. Even though vaccines are less effective, it is better to be vaccinated than not to be vaccinated. “
Dr. Adam Lauring, who studies the mutation of RNA viruses at the University of Michigan, agrees.
“I know people are concerned about the variants – will the vaccines work too?” he said. “But my boy! If we got 50-70% effectiveness from the flu shot every year, we’d be ecstatic. “
Breathe a little easier? Here’s what they and other scientists had to say about the new variants and their impact on our ability to end the pandemic.
Are you surprised to see more transmissible or vaccine resistant variants of the coronavirus?
It’s hardly surprising that the virus has changed over time – that’s what viruses do, De St. Maurice said.
As the virus copies itself, it is bound to make mistakes. And since December 2019, the virus is copying itself in more than 100 million people around the world. All of these infections have provided plenty of opportunities for that to change, she said.
However, most of these changes are so-called silent mutations. This means that they do not affect how the virus replicates, how it spreads, or the damage it inflicts on its human hosts.
What scientists couldn’t know ahead of time was when, or even if, a mutation would occur that would significantly affect the trajectory of the pandemic – making the virus more transmissible, for example, or more resistant to vaccines.
“Everyone knew it was a possibility,” Toner said. But “whoever said ‘I knew this was going to happen’ must have a pretty good crystal ball.”
We have been told that the coronavirus is seasonal. Can we still expect a drop in cases in spring and summer?
The more people who get vaccinated now, the less virus we can expect to see in the summer, even with the newer variants of the mix, said Chunhuei chi, director of the Center for Global Health at Oregon State University.
“The hope is that we can scale up our vaccination, and when the right number of people are vaccinated, it will slow the spread,” he said.
Toner said he hopes 40% to 50% of Americans will be vaccinated by the start of the summer. If so, we can certainly expect coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths to drop significantly – as well as opportunities for the virus to come across additional mutations.
Regardless of the transmissibility of any current or future variant, experts expect to see less spread during the summer months. In part, that’s because our behaviors change as the weather warms up and we can spend more time outdoors.
“What drives the transmission are really the gatherings between households, like during the holidays,” said De St. Maurice. Gathering outdoors is safer than gathering indoors, she added.
Do the new variants make collective immunity more difficult to obtain?
There is currently no evidence to suggest this, Chi said.
However, “the fact that they are more contagious increases the urgency of mass vaccinations to create the collective immunity necessary to slow the spread,” he said.
Most experts believe there is cross-immunity between the coronavirus variants, so if you’ve been vaccinated against one version, you’ll likely have at least partial immunity to the others, Toner said.
But if you are wondering if SARS-CoV-2 will ever be completely eradicated, the answer is probably no.
Lauring said the coronavirus could behave like the flu.
“We could end up in a place where every year there is a time of the year where there is a lot of SARS CoV-2 around, and some people get sick, and some people get very sick, and some people die.” , he said. “But that won’t be where we are now.”
Toner said he can imagine a future where we have to get vaccinated with a new coronavirus every few years or so. A new vaccine would probably be needed less often than that for influenza, but more often than that for measles.
Should these new variants change our public health strategy to fight the virus?
The general consensus: not really.
“What we can say after looking at other countries that have seen big peaks with the variants is that those big peaks were controlled in the same way we controlled our peaks – with social distancing, the wearing masks and avoiding the crowds inside, ”Toner said.
He added that the variants should serve as a reminder to stay vigilant.
“It’s important for us not to be seduced by the fact that this is all over,” he said. “Whether or not we see a big impact from the variants, there will continue to be spikes and surges across the country.”
And to be clear, we can still beat this pandemic, right?
Right, says De St. Maurice. But we will have to get to work.
“We need to reduce transmission to prevent the variants from happening,” she said. “The longer we let it mutate, the more likely we are to have variants that may escape vaccine immunity.”
Toner also expressed confidence that the pandemic was going to end.
“Even if we did nothing, we would come out of this pandemic,” he said. “It’s really about how quickly, at what cost and how many lives will be lost.”
In the future, COVID-19 will likely become an ordinary part of life – a common respiratory illness like those caused by other coronaviruses that were circulating before the start of the pandemic, he said.
“Children will be vaccinated for this, adults will receive periodic boosters or revaccinations every few years, and there could be small outbreaks making the news,” he said. “But it won’t overwhelm hospitals, it won’t cause huge loss of life.”
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