According to CNBC, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday that the available COVID-19 vaccine appears to be less effective against the new strain of coronavirus.
what happened
White House health adviser Fauci said on Thursday that the new available COVID-19 vaccines-particularly Pfizer and Moderna vaccines-provide some help in dealing with the global epidemic of new mutations in COVID-19. But there are still some concerns.
- Fauci said: “We track the situation in South Africa very seriously, which is a bit worrying, but it is not something we think we cannot handle.”
Fauci said that mutations often occur between viruses. However, according to CNBC, these mutations can be defeated if enough people are vaccinated.
- Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said: “Unless it replicates, the virus will not mutate.”
- Fauci said: “Moreover, if you can suppress this with a very good vaccine campaign, then you can actually avoid the harmful effects that this mutation may bring,” Fauci said.
- “The most important thing is: we are watching it closely. If we have to modify the vaccine, there are other plans. Given the platform we have, this is not a very onerous thing,” Fauci said.
What vaccine developers say
Pfizer BioNTech released the results of a new study earlier this week that examined whether their COVID-19 vaccine can defeat the new vaccine in the UK.
- As I wrote in “Deseret News”, this study published on bioRxiv shows that “there is no biologically significant difference in neutralizing activity”. This means that the COVID-19 variant has not changed enough characteristics to escape the vaccine.
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