New COVID-19 strains 'are making a difference': Doctor

Dr. Ben Weston, Medical Director for the Milwaukee COVID-19 Emergency Operations Center joins Yahoo Finance’s Kristin Myers to break down the latest coronavirus developments as concerns mount over the new virus variant.

Video Transcript

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KRISTIN MYERS: The coronavirus pandemic has now swelled to more than 20.8 million positive cases of the virus in the United States. So let's bring on Dr. Ben Weston, medical director for the Milwaukee COVID-19 Emergency Operations Center. So doctor, we have news of another strain of the coronavirus, this time from South Africa, that is even more concerning, according to the reports, and the one that we've heard about from the United Kingdom.

And we know that viruses mutate. We've talked about this a lot. We all learned about this in our middle and high school biology classes. But at what point do we need to be concerned that these mutations are one, resistant to this vaccine that we have out, and two, not detected by the tests that we currently have?

BEN WESTON: Yeah. Important questions. Thank you for having me. So when we look at these new strains that we're seeing, as you mentioned, it's because of mutations, multiple mutations. And typically, these mutations, as you mentioned, are benign. They don't have much effect on the virus.

It seems that the strains we're seeing in the UK, and seeing in South Africa, and now starting to see in states-- here in the United States are making a difference. And that difference seems to be in the transmissibility, not as much in the severity or how deadly the virus is. But it is still unclear why that increased transmissibility is there. Is it because the virus has higher affinity for the cells? Is it because there's more viral load in our system? It's unclear. So there's still a lot to learn about these new strains.

KRISTIN MYERS: I want to ask about what we're expecting and what you're expecting. Obviously, working in the emergency operations center, just if you could quickly tell us-- we have about a minute here-- what you guys are expecting for the month of January.

BEN WESTON: Well, so it's an interesting time. In Wisconsin right now we're having pretty good numbers, although the last few days we're certainly starting to see an uptick in the percent positives. And if there's one thing we've learned with this virus, it's that no state, no county lives in isolation. We see what's going on in Arizona. We see what's going on in California. We know, unfortunately, it's a matter of time before it swings back and the Midwest is hit hard once again.

So we'll continue to prepare. We'll get the vaccine out as fast as we can. And we'll continue our high levels of testing and our individual precautions.

KRISTIN MYERS: Absolutely. An incredibly difficult time. I want to thank you for bringing us some of those updates. Dr. Ben Weston, medical director for the Milwaukee COVID-19 Emergency Operations Center. Hope to have you back with us again in the future.

BEN WESTON: Thank you.