Covid-19 Variants Pose 'Real Threat' To Vaccine Progress, CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a national public health institute in the United States.
It is a United States federal agency, under the Department of Health and Human Services, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
Its main goal is to protect public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease, injury, and disability in the US and internationally.

What has happened?

The spread of highly contagious coronavirus variants is threatening to fuel a “potential fourth surge of cases” in the US, a top health official Dr Rochelle Walensky has warned.
The head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said she was concerned by recent Covid-19 data.
She said about 70,000 new cases a day were recorded last week, “a very high number”.
There were nearly 2,000 deaths a day in same period.
“Please hear me clearly: At this level of cases, with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained,“ Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said on Monday.

“These variants are a very real threat to our people and our progress.“
There are many different versions, or variants, of Covid-19 circulating, but health experts are particularly concerned about a few.
These include variants first detected in UK, South Africa and Brazil that appear to be more contagious.
Given this, Dr Walensky said she was “really worried” about reports of US states “rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from Covid-19″.
“We have the ability to stop a potential fourth surge of cases in this country.
In total, the US has recorded more than 28 million infections and 500,000 deaths related to Covid-19, according to World Health Organization (WHO) data.

More than 2,463 infections involving variants of concern have been reported, according to CDC data.
Most of those cases – at least 2,400 – are of the UK variant.
The true number of people infected by variants in the US is thought to be higher.
Scientists believe current vaccines do offer protection against variants as well.
But the CDC says, until more people are vaccinated, variants could drive a spike in cases, threatening health systems already under strain.

A UK or Kent variant (also known as 1.1.7) now dominant in much of Britain, has spread to more than 50 countries and appears to be mutating again.
A South Africa variant (B.1.351) found in at least 20 other countries, including the UK.
The variant from Brazil (P1) detected in four travellers to Japan which has now been found in the UK.
All three have undergone changes to their spike protein – the part of the virus which attaches to human cells.
As a result, they seem to be better at infecting cells and spreading.

Scientists around the world are on the look-out and any important ones will be closely studied and monitored.
Experts are updating coronavirus vaccines.
The UK Government has announced a deal with biopharmaceutical company CureVac to develop vaccines against future variants, with a pre-order of 50 million doses.

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