WASHINGTON — Unidentified variants of the coronavirus that are more contagious than those that first spread in the United States may be fueling an explosion in cases and the rising death toll, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Friday.
In an interview with McClatchy, Redfield, who is a virologist, said he wasn’t surprised that highly contagious forms of the virus had emerged with multiple mutations in the United Kingdom and South Africa, and were showing up in the United States.
The U.K. variant drove a nationwide lockdown in Britain, and has been found in at least seven jurisdictions across the United States. The Food and Drug Administration on Friday issued an alert warning that many existing tests may not pick up the coronavirus in its British form, known as B.1.1.7.
A report by the White House coronavirus task force sent to states Friday also raised the suspicion that a U.S. variant could be causing the recent surge. “This fall/winter surge has been at nearly twice the rate of rise of cases as the spring and summer surges,” the report states. “This acceleration suggests there may be a USA variant that has evolved here.”
But multiple unknown variants may be spreading in America, Redfield said, as scientists warn that the United States has done a relatively poor job at tracking genetic changes to the virus compared with other countries.
“We’re fairly confident that there are variants in the U.S. that have a transmission advantage, and we think that’s contributing to the slope of the surge that we’re seeing right now,” Redfield said. “I expect that over the weeks and months ahead a number of variants will be identified.”
“These variants are going to continue to occur, and they are going to have an impact on the pandemic,” he said.
Redfield is confident that the two coronavirus vaccines that have been approved by the FDA for emergency use – produced by Pfizer and Moderna – will work against the new emerging strains. British public health officials have recently expressed concern that the vaccines may not work against the variant discovered in South Africa, which included mutations to the spike protein of the coronavirus that helps it invade human cells.
“We’re kind of in a race in this country to get the American public vaccinated over the next three, four, five, six months,” Redfield said.
“This is the reality, and I do think it’s important for everyone to realize that the state of play is not static,” he said. “The state of play right now is the virus that’s transmitting in this nation is selecting for the virus that can be transmitted easier, and easier, and easier.”
Over 4,000 individuals died in the United States on Thursday from the coronavirus. Redfield warned that could increase in the weeks ahead to up to 5,000 deaths a day from the disease.
Vaccine availability should increase entering the spring. But there is concern at the CDC that the first group offered the vaccine — front-line workers at hospitals, long-term care facilities and nursing homes — are refusing to take the vaccine in high numbers.
“I think it is disconcerting,” Redfield said. “You know, I’ve always said that my greatest fear about the whole vaccination program was not whether the innovation would come, or whether we’d develop efficacious vaccines. My biggest fear was the issue of vaccine hesitancy.”
“Hopefully, health care professionals will continue to move toward the vaccine,” he continued. “I think there was an over-concern among some institutions in the healthcare field that the side effects would be such that they may lose employees, so they were trying to stagger vaccinations, so they wouldn’t have everyone out.”
President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team on Friday said it was planning to release nearly all available doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines once they are produced, instead of holding back half at all times. The Trump administration had held half of the doses back to ensure that every individual who received their first dose of vaccine has access to a second.
Biden’s strategy is to get as many doses out as quickly as possible while keeping a minimal amount in reserve. A Biden official stressed that the president-elect’s team still strongly believes that individuals should take both doses in the time frame laid out by the FDA.
FDA and CDC officials say the two vaccines authorized so far have only been tested based on individuals taking two doses – and that the effectiveness of a single dose has not been tested in clinical trials.
Redfield suggested that releasing all doses at once carried some risks.
“Initially, there was no certainty about the cadence about the ability of both Pfizer and Moderna to continue to provide vaccine,” he said. “There was concern that, when we start to do this, that if there’s a run failure, that could then potentially jeopardize the second dose of the vaccine for individuals.”
“I currently would argue that it’s probably not prudent to not have some reserve second doses in case there’s a production line failure,” he added.
