Yahoo Finance Fauci says vaccine ‘still effective’ against UK and South African variants
Dr Anthony Fauci said that the two Covid-19 vaccines approved in the US will still be effective against more-contagious variants of the disease first discovered in the UK and South Africa.
The nation’s leading infectious disease expert said there are some early indications that vaccine efficacy against the UK and South Africa variants has shown some diminution, but it’s “not something that we don't think we can handle.”
“It appears that the vaccine will still be effective,” he said, though he said the South Africa variant is "a little bit more concerning."
Dr Fauci pointed to a “cushion effect” – the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines can suppress the virus variants at a level that is still higher than the threshold for the vaccines to be effective.
He said it “does not appear” that the South African variant is in the US, though the nation’s comprehensive sequence surveillance “is not at the level we would like” to make a determination. But “given the information we have today, it does not appear” it is in the US, he said.
The variant is believed to be twice as transmissible than the dominant strain in the US, he said, underscoring the urgency for widespread inoculation to prevent the virus from replicating and mutating.
Dr Fauci appeared at the lectern at the White House briefing room for the first time under Joe Biden’s administration and for the first time in months after the chaos of former president Donald Trump’s response to the public health crisis.
On Thursday morning, he addressed the World Health Organization to retract Mr Trump’s withdrawal from the agency.
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