NASHVILLE, TN – The country is in a race against time. Will enough people get vaccinated to achieve herd immunity and stop the coronavirus or will it resurge and force another series of lockdowns?
Overall, the case numbers and deaths in the U.S. are declining and at least 12 states have relaxed restrictions. Schools are back to in-person instruction in many cities, including Nashville, Chicago, and Memphis.
The latest research is troubling though. The B.1.1.7 variant arrived in the U.S. in late 2020 from Great Britain. In February, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) warned the B.1.1.7 could become predominant in the U.S. by March.
The first case turned up on Dec. 29 in Colorado, and researchers soon found another case in San Diego. It was then spotted in many other parts of the country.
According to the New York Times, the variant was separately introduced into the country at least eight times, most likely as a result of people traveling to the United States from Britain between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, found the transmission rate of the B.1.1.7 variant is 30-40 percent higher than common COVID-19. If it takes hold, it is likely to increase the number of COVID cases and deaths. It is spreading exponentially and has already been implicated in surges in other countries, including Ireland, Portugal and Jordan.
The new study indicates the variant is spreading fast in Florida, where scientists estimate more than 4 percent of cases are now caused by B.1.1.7. The national figure may be 1 percent or 2 percent, according to Anderson. Last week thousands of college students spent Spring Break in Miami. They will likely spread the new variant far and wide.
“It’s a race of the mutant viruses versus the vaccines,” said Dr Nirav Shah, an adjunct professor of medicine at Stanford University. Shah said none of the five COVID variants has escaped the protection provided by the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines that have been given to 83 million Americans.
“The story of the virus variants is a story of evolution and natural selection. What happens is, the more virus particles there are, the more chances that just by chance alone a single virus particle may be a little different than the rest of them,” he said.
When there is a lot of virus going around and a lot of infections, the more chance there is of a genetic change in a single virus cell that makes it more successful than others. “It can attach itself to cells a little better than all the other particles,” Shah said. And that’s all it takes for a new more virulent COVID variant to emerge.
“We have to get people vaccinated as quickly as possible as broadly as possible,” he said. Simply put, the current vaccines are not as effective against the variants but they are still effective and the more people who are immunized, the fewer the chances for a mutation to emerge.
“The hope is we can get high-schoolers vaccinated as well and by the Fall we should be getting closer (to herd immunity)…but it depends on how many people actually roll up their sleeves for the shot,” he said.
Meanwhile, companies are researching ways to attack the spike protein in the COVID-19 virus by developing booster shots.
“There is also talk about multi-variant vaccines, just like with the flu vaccine. The flu vaccine is actually a combination of several different types of vaccines against several different strains of the flu. That’s the kind of approach they are going to be taking now,” Shah said.
He predicted COVID vaccines will evolve to combat the variants and in order to beat them everyone needs to be inoculated. “We are all our neighbors,” he said. Come flu season you might get a flu shot and a COVID-booster shot, too.
What about vaccine hesitancy? To read more about how a doctor in California convinced Black communities in San Francisco and Oakland to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated, see (Vaccine hesitancy).
This story was brought to you by the Blue Cross Foundation of California and Ethnic Media Services.
