The New York homemade COVID-19 variant can infect people who have already had the virus – or even been vaccinated, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration said on Sunday.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb said it remains unclear whether COVID-19, known as B.1.526, is causing viral surges in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.
“What we don’t understand with 1,526 is whether or not people are re-infected with it and whether people who could have been vaccinated are now infected with it,” Gottlieb said Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Make the Nation.”
The New York variant contains a mutation similar to the South African variant B.1.351, which showed “in some cases” the reinfection of people who had already had the error, Gottlieb said.
“The question is whether [B.1.526] it is responsible for some of the growth we are seeing in New York right now and whether this is the beginning of a new outbreak inside the city, ”he said.
The former Trump administration official said that public health experts do not currently have enough data to draw clear conclusions.
He asked the CDC to work with New York officials to identify potential B.1.526-related coronavirus infections, which he warned were “probably more widespread than we detect.”
“They need to do aggressive marketing to doctors, asking doctors to come forward and report cases when they see situations where people have been previously infected with COVID, probably re-infecting themselves,” he said of the federal agency.
“We don’t know if this is happening, but anecdotally, some doctors are reporting this now and this could explain why you are seeing an increase in cases.”
Gottlieb said the federal government’s vaccination effort should serve as a “backstop” against another wave of COVID-19 cases – but warned that pressure for business reopening by officials in New York and other states could lead to a backlog. “Increase” of cases.
“We got our foot off the brake a little too early. March will always be a difficult month. People want to lean forward, but we should have waited until April, “he said.
“The fact that we have done this now probably means that we will probably go on the plateau, maybe we will see an increase in certain parts of the country.”
COVID-19 variants, including B.1.526, account for more than half of New York’s new coronavirus cases, city health officials said earlier this month.
On Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office announced the city’s first confirmed case of the Brazilian version of P.1, which, like the New York version, may make vaccines less effective.
“While further research is warranted, researchers at Oxford University have recently published data that is not reviewed by colleagues, indicating that variant P.1 may be less resistant to current vaccines than originally thought,” he said. said the governor’s office.