Fauci sees the US gaining control of the pandemic by next fall

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Dr. Anthony Fauci, the world’s leading infectious disease specialist, said Wednesday he predicts America will get enough COVID-19 collective immunity through vaccinations to regain “some semblance of normalcy” by fall 2021, despite early vaccine failures. .

Fauci made remarks during an online pandemic discussion with California Governor Gavin Newsom, who announced from the outset that a more infectious variant of the coronavirus originally found in the UK had been detected in his state a day after the first Known case in the US has been documented in Colorado.

Newsom said the coronavirus variant B.1.1.7 was confirmed earlier in the day in a patient in Southern California. He did not provide further details. But the California Department of Public Health said in a later statement that the person, a patient in San Diego County, has no known travel history, suggesting that the variant is spreading in the community.

Fauci said he was not “surprised”, adding that additional cases of the variant would probably occur around the country and that the mutant nature of these viruses is normal.

“It seems that this special mutation makes the virus better when transmitted from one person to another,” he said. However, people infected with previous forms of SARS-CoV-2 “do not appear to be re-infected by this,” which means that any immunity already acquired “is protective against this special strain,” Fauci added.

He also stressed that the so-called British variant is not believed to be more serious in terms of the disease it causes and that the newly approved COVID-19 vaccines will prove as effective against it as against previously known forms. of the virus.

The same is considered true for a second new variant, also more infectious and reported for the first time in South Africa, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

However, the emergence of a more highly transmissible variant could make the rapid launch of immunizations all the more critical.

President-elect Joe Biden warned on Tuesday that it could take years to inoculate most Americans, given an initial rate of vaccine distribution that fell short of the Trump administration’s promises. He called on Congress to approve more funding for the effort.

“WE WILL COME”

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Wednesday that he is confident early errors in vaccine distribution will be overcome.

“As we enter January, the feeling is that we will gain momentum to catch up,” he told Newsom, saying he expects the immunizations to be widely available to the general public on demand by April.

Assuming that the extensive vaccination campaign is progressing as it should by May, June and July, “By the beginning of autumn, we will have enough good herd immunity to be able to really return to a strong appearance of normalcy – schools, theaters , sports events, restaurants “, said Fauci.

However, the prospect of fighting a more contagious form of the virus comes as the pandemic has largely spiraled out of control in much of the United States for weeks. California, the most populous state with 40 million, has become the latest hotbed, with hospitals in and out of Los Angeles reporting full-capacity intensive care units.

Medical experts attribute a worsening of the pandemic in recent weeks to the arrival of colder weather and the failure of many Americans to comply with public health warnings to avoid social gatherings and unnecessary travel during the holiday season.

The result has been an alarming wave of infections and hospitalizations that have strained health care systems to their limits and a steady increase in the number of deaths in the United States, exceeding 338,000 lives lost nationally so far.

In addition to the revolt of daily social life in America, the pandemic has stifled the economy, slowing down millions of unseen workers since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The first US case of the British version was announced on Tuesday by the governor of Colorado, Jared Polis. At a news conference Wednesday, Polis described the infected patient as a 20-year-old National Guard soldier who had been assigned to help solve a COVID outbreak at a nursing home in Simla, Colorado, on the outskirts of the metropolitan area. Denver.

The patient, isolating and recovering at home, has no recent travel history, which Dr. Henry Walke, incident manager for the CDC’s COVID response, said is a sign of the person-to-person transmission of the variant in United States.

The director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment told reporters that a second member of the National Guard could have contracted the UK version as well, although final confirmation of the lab was still awaited.

The new variant has been detected in several European countries, as well as in Canada, Australia, India, South Korea and Japan, among others.

The US government on Monday began calling on all airline passengers arriving from the UK – including US citizens – to test negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours of departure.

The government could extend coronavirus testing requirements for international air travel beyond the UK as early as next week, informed sources said on Wednesday.