Fauci Says Vaccines Still Protect Against New Coronavirus Variants
Even though some of the variants impact antibody efficacy, the vaccines will still work thanks to the all-important “cushion effect”
The first press briefing from the Biden administration to include Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, received a lot of attention for the jokes, smiles, and pointed questions about the previous president.
However, the focus of Fauci’s comments on the pandemic itself was no laughing matter. The nation’s top infectious disease expert went into detail about the new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that are now circulating in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil. Of key importance was what the three variants could mean for the Covid-19 vaccines slowly being rolled out around the world.
Fauci opened by stating, “We need to understand that RNA viruses like coronaviruses mutate all the time. Most of the mutations don’t have any physiological relevance with regard to the function of the virus itself. However, every once in a while you get mutations, either singly or clustered in combinations, which do have an impact.”
