Oh, good.
-
Dr Anthony Fauci has warned that there is still a 'very high risk' of getting infected with a new variant of COVID-19 even if you have been previously infected, as he urged all Americans to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
Fauci, who has been appointed as Joe Biden's chief medical advisor, told a White House press briefing that getting vaccinated was more important than ever given the emergence of new strains, in particular those from South Africa, England and Brazil.
On Friday the first major analysis of the South African strain found that being infected previously did not prevent re-infection with the new variant.
Fauci explained that the worrying news meant more people needed to be vaccinated, to reduce the amount of people in whom the virus can replicate.
'You need to get vaccinated when it becomes available as quickly and as expeditiously as possible throughout the country,' he said.
'And the reason for that is viruses cannot mutate if they don't replicate.
'And if you stop their replication by vaccinating widely and not giving the virus an open playing field to continue to respond to the pressures that you put on it, you will not get mutations.'
As of Sunday, 471 cases of variants first identified in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil had been located in the United States, 467 of which were the variant found in Britain.
Fauci later told CNN that there was a 'very high rate' of being re-infected with the new variants, if they become dominant.
'If it becomes dominant, the experience of our colleagues in South Africa indicate that even if you've been infected with the original virus that there is a very high rate of reinfection to the point where previous infection does not seem to protect you against reinfection,' he said.
