Three highly contagious mutations of Covid have been detected in at least 33 states across the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
A member of the Biden-Harris Transition Covid Advisory Board has warned that highly transmissible new Covid variants may be resistant to the current range of available vaccines.
“They’re more virulent, can cause more death, and some of them may even escape the immune response, whether it’s natural or from the vaccine,” Dr. Celine Gounder said during a Thursday evening interview on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.” “So it’s really important right now that we do everything possible to preserve the vaccines to make sure they keep working and that means preventing the spread of these new variants.”
According to the CDC, three highly contagious mutations of Covid have been detected in at least 33 states across the U.S. Researchers are concerned that these highly transmissible variants could prolong the pandemic and potentially cause another wave of infections.
Projections by the CDC even predict the much-discussed U.K. variant to be the dominant variant in the U.S. by March.
Gounder, an epidemiologist at NYU, told Shepard Smith that she’s “concerned” people will let their guards down in March and that it could potentially lead to another surge in cases.
“That’s a time when you might have some families taking spring break, so you would have the additive effect of, again, a holiday where people might be socializing, not taking all the safety measures, on top of this far more contagious variant,” Gounder warned.
