The Race Between Variants Of The Virus And Vaccination
Nikki Attkisson | Last Updated : March 19, 2021Experts have said there is a tough fight between the contagious variants of the Covid-19, which is rapidly being found across the U.S., which seems to be threatening another phase of the virus Covid-19 vaccinations. Further, the easing of the restrictions in various states seems to complicate things.
The Race Between Variants Of The Virus And Vaccination
The Brown University School of Public Health’s dean, Dr. Ashish Jha, said that this will be a close call to a news agency on Tuesday. The vaccinating numbers are increasing really well, which is good news. But the bad news is that various variants from across the world are spreading very quickly across the U.S.
Jha has added that as per him, the vaccine should be winning in this situation. But there is a big problem to it. What Mississippi, Texas and some other states are doing for relaxing the norms and getting rid of these mask orders is not correct. This kind of actions that make everyone think that things are back to normal is not correct and becomes the major reason for more contagious strains.
The governors in Mississippi and Texas are among a dozen state leaders, which have greatly eased restrictions in March. Since they see a decrease in Covid-19 infractions and an increased vaccinations.
As per the data released by Johns Hopkins University, in these 15 states, new cases of Covid-19 have started increasing this week. On Tuesday, there was an increase by 10% than the previous week. In the two states of Michigan and Minnesota, the cases came higher by about 40% than the previous week as per this data.
Since new cases are still decreasing now overall in the U.S. and experts, are looking at the typically more sustained data for at least a set of weeks to identify the new trend. But as we have seen, various concerning variants are circulating in the U.S., so catching early signs might be the key that will help in limiting their continued spread.
The U.S. is creating a perfect situation for the spread of different variants. This is what the experts are worried about at this point in time.
This also includes two major Covid-19 strains that were first detected in California, which are at the present moment variants of concern officially as per the CDC or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These variants can be more than 20% transmissible, CDC has said this after citing some early research, and there are some treatments that might be quite less effective against these strains. CDC didn’t say that these vaccines will not work against these.
Policy at the University of Minnesota and Center for Infectious Disease Research’s director Dr Michael Osterholm has said that there is only one centre and front on the virus issue. The B.1.1.7 variant, which was a contagious strain that was detected in the U.K. This is being projected for becoming a dominant variant across the U.S. in a few weeks, as per the CDC.
Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of CDC, has said on Monday that as per their current models, by the last week of March and the first week of April, the B.1.1.7 would become a dominant variant.
It was seen that there have been more than 4,690 cases of this variant which was reported in the U.S. This doesn’t likely represent the total of cases across the U.S., but rather it is one of those samples which the scientists may have found after analyzing the positive samples.
With over 15 years as a practicing journalist, Nikki Attkisson found herself at Powdersville Post now after working at several other publications. She is an award-winning journalist with an entrepreneurial spirit and worked as a journalist covering technology, innovation, environmental issues, politics, health etc. Nikki Attkisson has also worked on product development, content strategy, and editorial management for numerous media companies. She began her career at local news stations and worked as a reporter in national newspapers.