Fauci: “We have to assume now” that the strain of the British virus can “cause more damage”

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Anthony FauciAnthony Fauci: Distribution of AstraZeneca vaccine begins in Brazil Biden and British Prime Minister discuss NATO and multilateralism during Sunday’s call: all eyes on the Biden administration to fight coronavirus MORE, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, said recent British government data suggests a new, more virulent strain of coronavirus is also more deadly, but said US officials should examine the numbers themselves .

Asked by CBS’s Margaret Brennan about her earlier claims that the strain, while more infectious, was apparently no more deadly, Fauci said: “The data that came out was after I had been all the time saying which didn’t seem to be more deadly. So that’s where we got that information. “

“When British researchers looked more closely at the mortality rate of a certain age group, they found that it was one per thousand … and then it rose to 1.3 per thousand in a given group, “Fauci added. “This is a significant increase. Therefore, the most recent data agree with what the British say. We want to look at the data ourselves, but we have every reason to believe it. They are a very competent group. “

Fauci went on to say that Americans “must now assume that what has circulated dominantly in the UK has some increase in what we call virulence, that is, the power of the virus to cause more damage, including death.”

Fauci went separately to another strain believed to have originated in South Africa, saying: “In some cases [the strain] it decreases the effectiveness of the vaccine, ”but the vaccine was still generally effective.

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