Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who has been selected to be the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks during an event at The Queen Theater in Wilmington, Del, on Tuesday, December 8, 2020.
Susan Walsh | AP
The United States must rapidly deploy vaccines against Covid-19 and increase its vigilance before highly contagious variants are applied or the virus mutates again and worsens the pandemic, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday.
Three variants first identified in the UK, South Africa and Brazil have worried researchers, according to an opinion from the investigation he wrote with Dr Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the White House. A CDC study published in January warned that the variant found in the UK, known as B.1.1.7, is likely to become the dominant strain circulating in the US in March.
Variant B.1.1.7 has been shown to be highly transmissible and “preliminary data suggest the possibility of increasing the severity of the disease with infection,” wrote Walensky, Fauci, and Drs. Henry Walke, the Covid incident manager at the CDC, in the view published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association or JAMA.
Walensky told JAMA in a separate interview on Wednesday that the variant is believed to be about 50% more transmissible than previous strains and early data suggest it could be up to 50% more deadly.
“Modeling data have illustrated how a more contagious variant, such as B.1.1.7, has the potential to exacerbate the trajectory of the US pandemic and to reverse the current downward trend of new infections and delay even more pandemic control, ”Walensky explains. he told the newspaper.
This is a developing story. Please check back later for updates.