Washington – Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), warned on Sunday that a new strain of coronavirus discovered in Europe that has severely restricted parts of the UK appears to be more contagious than existing variants, but probably it is not more lethal.
“There is a new variant and the question is whether or not it has become the predominant strain in London because of what we call the effect of the founders – it has just entered London and entered some super-widespread early events – or we call it selective pressure, it’s selected because it has qualities that make it spread more, “Gottlieb said in an interview with Face the Nation.” More and more, it seems to be catching up. It seems that this new strain is more contagious. “
But Gottlieb said it was “probably not more lethal,” although he noted that public health agencies “do not fully understand its outlines.”
“It doesn’t seem more virulent, more dangerous than COVID in the first place,” he said.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has imposed stricter restrictions in London and southern England amid a rapid rise in coronavirus infections, which appears to be driven by a new strain of coronavirus that is more than 70% more transmissible than existing. The UK has alerted the World Health Organization to the new strain and several European countries have stopped flights from the UK in response.
Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams Gottlieb’s assessment of the new strain resonated, saying “Face the Nation” earlier Sunday that officials “have no indication that it will affect our ability to continue vaccinating people or that it is more dangerous or deadly than the strains that are currently there and about which we know. “
Gottlieb said the next question is whether people who have already had COVID-19 can be infected with the new variant and whether the new strain excludes vaccines.
“Probably not,” he said. “This virus moves like all viruses. The flu moves the most. And what viruses do is change their surface proteins. And once they do, the antibodies we’ve developed against these surface proteins no longer Now the flu moves very fast, it changes its surface proteins very quickly, so we need to constantly get vaccinated against the flu Some viruses like measles do not change their surface proteins, and so does the measles vaccine we received. “Coronavirus still appears somewhere in 20 years ago. It will move and change its surface proteins, but probably slowly enough for us to develop new vaccines.”
According to the FDA Pfizer vaccine authorization for emergency use on Dec. 11, health care workers and senior officials, including members of Congress, began receiving the first doses of coronavirus vaccine last week. Vice President Mike Pence, Second Lady Karen Pence and Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams were vaccinated on live television On Friday, President-elect Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden will receive their first blows on Monday.
FDA issued an emergency use permit for a second coronavirus vaccine, developed by Modern, Friday, and deliveries it began to unfold Sunday.
While vaccine approval has marked a welcome new phase of the coronavirus pandemic, cases in the United States continue to rise and the death toll continues to rise. There have been more than 17.6 million infections and more than 316,000 deaths caused by COVID-19, and Gottlieb predicted that the number of infections will peak around the first week of January.
“The health care system will continue to see a burden that exceeds the peak of infections due to time delay until hospitalization and also time delay until death due to COVID,” he said. So after these peak infections, we will continue to see deaths continue to rise for another three weeks.
Gottlieb said the nation was “at the peak of this pandemic right now” and said it was crucial to administer vaccine doses as soon as possible.
“A vaccine that will be delivered next week is likely to have a greater impact on public health than a vaccine that will be delivered in five weeks from now,” he said. So we should lean forward and try to get as much vaccine as possible.