Free Republic

The U.S. has been flying blind in the race between vaccination efforts and the spread of new coronavirus variants that could potentially spark another deadly nationwide surge and reduce effectiveness of the vaccines. U.S. public health officials have been operating with incomplete information because of an inadequate viral genomics surveillance system. When the U.K. variant first emerged, the viral surveillance system in the U.S. was woefully lacking in resources, especially compared with other countries. Pierce noted that one area that needs immediate attention is the sequencing of every "breakthrough case," which are cases in which people get infected even though...

OVID could mutate into a new super variant which could beat vaccines, make people sicker and reinfect victims in a devastating new outbreak, leading experts have warned. Scientists told The Sun Online about the need to vaccinate as many people as possible and stick to the lockdown rules as it is feared the rapidly changing virus could overwhelm our current arsenal of vaccines. The experts hammered home the need to rob Covid of the rapid person-to-person transmission which helps it develop mutations. And they warned possible new variants in the future could make people sicker and re-infect people who had...

A fourth wave of coronavirus infections is beginning to mount in states across the nation as health experts and officials beg pandemic-exhausted Americans to stay vigilant. The United States has reported an average of 65,000 new cases in the last seven days, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), up about 10,000 cases per day since the most recent nadir two weeks ago.

Two-thirds of disease experts believe coronavirus variants will render vaccines ineffective within one year, a new survey finds. Conducted by the People's Vaccine Alliance, about 66 percent of epidemiologists, virologists and infectious disease specialists say they think that within 12 months, the virus will mutate to such a degree that first-generation vaccines will be useless at preventing infection. Of that group, nearly one-fifth believe it would occur within six months and one-third said within nine months. Fewer than one in eight doctors said they believed that mutations would never make the vaccines currently available ineffective.

This is so funny, and by ‘funny’ I mean deadly, end times, super-serious and life-threatening kind of funny, if there is such a thing. Now that they have convinced half a billion people to take two rounds of the COVID jab, including people who swore last year they would never take it, today comes the ‘update’ that within a year all those jabs will be ineffective, and it will all have to be done over again. And again, and again, and again, I think you see where this is leading, don’t you? Let me break it down if you’re still...

A new "double mutant" variant of the coronavirus has been detected from samples collected in India. Officials are checking if the variant, where two mutations come together in the same virus, may be more infectious or less affected by vaccines. Some 10,787 samples from 18 Indian states also showed up 771 cases of known variants - 736 of the UK, 34 of the South African and one Brazilian. Officials say the variants are not linked to a spike in cases in India. India reported 47,262 cases and 275 deaths on Wednesday - the sharpest daily rise this year. The Indian...

More than 330 million vaccinations have been administered in the fight against Covid-19, and a new vaccine candidate is now ready to enter the ring. Novavax recently completed its final analyses and will seek FDA and international approval in the coming weeks. The new candidate uses a mechanism to prompt immune responses that is different from vaccines already in circulation, but remains effective against non-variant forms of the virus. Here I discuss the results and implications of the Novavax trials and the vaccine’s performance against surging variants of SARS-CoV-2. The press release details a United Kingdom trial of 15,000 participants....

A variant of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 called P.1 seems to be able to reinfect people who already recovered from COVID-19, despite whatever protections their immune systems built up. The variant, which was discovered and began circulating in Brazil back in December, poses a new threat that has scientists worried about the potential for yet another major wave of the coronavirus, The New York Times reports. It’s currently surging in the city of Manaus, but has also spread to 24 countries as well as several US states. “It’s right to be worried about P.1, and this data gives us the reason...

A new study of the U.K. and South Africa variants of SARS-CoV-2 predicts that current vaccines and certain monoclonal antibodies may be less effective at neutralizing these variants and that the new variants raise the specter that reinfections could be more likely. The study was published in Nature on March 8, 2021. A preprint of the study was first posted to BioRxiv on January 26, 2021. ...

Scientists have discovered a coronavirus mutation that is of 'urgent concern' because it makes the virus more contagious and has already become dominant in the places it's reached - including part of the US. Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico say that the mutant strain started spreading in early February in Europe. It has since made its way to the US, where it became the most common - and aggressive - strain on the East Coast by March, and the scientists say its now the world-dominating strain. In their report, which hasn't been peer-reviewed but was posted...

Scientists say they have discovered what they believe is a mutated strain of COVID-19 — and are now warning that this new strain could be way more contagious than plain old coronavirus. According to a Tuesday report in the Los Angeles Times, researchers say that a new "mutant" strain of coronavirus has emerged. The study, led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, reveals that the new strain is more contagious than versions that spread in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. In addition to being more contagious, the new strain could reportedly make people more...