Welcome back to Cheddar is closing bell. A heavily
mutated covid variant classified as omicron by the World Health
Organization has been detected in South Africa, sparking fears
over the new outbreak earlier today? Dr Anthony Fauci
cautioned about its rapid spread. Take a listen.
We want to find out scientists, scientists exactly what
is going on. But it's something that has emerged
in South Africa and seems to be spreading in a
a reasonably rapid rate in the sense of when they
do test positivity they're seeing that's a bit more widespread
in South Africa than was originally felt a couple of
days ago. So it's in a fluid motion.
We're finding more about it. And literally it's something
that in real time we're learning more and more about
. All right. So joining us now is Dr
Amish Adalja infectious disease expert and senior scholar john Hopkins
Center for Health Security Amish. How worried are you
about this new variant and what is so different about
the mutations? It's too early. I think to
be worried. I think what we want to do
is answer some basic questions about this. This variant
. Understanding what those mutations mean in the real world
, are the mutation is going to be something that
pose difficulties for our vaccines for monoclonal antibodies and is
this going to be more transmissible? Is what we're
seeing in South Africa. Representative of what to expect
or is it some kind of you know, is
there is there bias in the data? Is it
an artifact of the way they're testing. Why are
these people getting infected? Who are there? There's
a lot of questions that need to be answered before
you can know definitively what a variant represents. But
there's enough information there that it's rightly designated a variant
of concern and I think we'll hear a lot more
in the next couple of weeks about where this falls
kind of in the risk matrix. Now, currently
the omicron variant has also been detected in Israel Hong
kong and also Belgium confirming its first case earlier today
. So how fast is it spreading compared to other
variants? And how concerned should we be in the
United States? It's hard to know exactly how fast
it's spreading because we don't do enough testing. We
don't do enough sequencing. I suspect that it's in
more countries than the ones you just listed. And
the fact is that Belgian case had no link with
South Africa or any South African countries telling you that
there is likely some spread going on in europe as
well. Despite the fact that they're going into this
travel ban type of uh this travel ban type of
mentality, What we want to know is how it
fares against delta because delta has been a variant that's
basically swept the world and made it very, very
difficult for any other variant to get any kind of
foothold. So is this something that could out compete
? Delta? I think that's going to be a
very big challenge for this variant and I think that's
the most important question to answer and also understanding what
it looks like in terms of vaccinated countries because South
Africa is a country with maybe about 25% of the
population fully vaccinated. How does it fare and moderately
vaccinated places or highly vaccinated places? Those are also
going to really gauge how we respond to it.
Now, officials around the world were quick to tighten
borders. The U. K. And the EU
banned flights from South Africa in the region. We
heard just recently heard the U. S. Will
do the same starting monday. So the World Health
Organization actually spoke out against hastily imposing travel restrictions today
. Why would they do that? They did it
because there's no data to support the use of these
travel restrictions. As I said, the Belgian case
was transmitted locally. This is something that already has
left the area where it may have originated. So
I think that when you do a travel ban you
basically waste a lot of resources implementing the travel ban
. You give people a false sense of security when
the virus is likely already outside of the area of
the travel ban. And then you punish countries like
South Africa, South Africa should actually be praised for
what they did. They discovered a new variant.
They reported it. They shared all that data.
That's something we want people to do. What did
South Africa get not praise but penalty penalties from the
biden administration penalties from the EU. This is wrong
. Our travel bans did not Save the United States
from COVID-19 and the same mistake gets repeated over and
over again. And many of us in this field
continue to say travel bans don't work, but politicians
love them for some reason and it's not scientifically based
and it has very negative consequences and they should stop
. But unfortunately this is red meat to politicians and
they continue to use it. So when it comes
to them getting penalized for announcing that they found this
variant. Do you think there will be some hesitancy
from other countries if they come across a new variant
because they don't want to face the same, the
same kind of penalties. I think there will be
this has been the story of this this virus from
the very beginning that there was lack of transparency in
china and there's lack of transparent, there's likely gonna
be lack of transparency in other places because if they
find a variant and they don't get praise from the
scientific community but get condemned for finding something that they
diligently looked for. It really disincentivize is the free
flow of data and it ends up causing penalties.
So country Ministry of Health me second guess whether they
want to publish something because they won't be met with
praise or nobel prizes. They will be met with
a travel ban. So there are many different variants
of COVID-19 circulating around the world? But where do
they come from? When does one become a variant
of concern? What exactly does it need to be
classified as You have to realize that there are so
many variants that you've never heard of that haven't made
headlines because they don't really change the function of the
virus. But there are some that develop mutations that
change the ability of the virus to either escape some
of our countermeasures or to transmit more efficiently. And
that's what gets them designations such as variant of interest
variant of concern. So it's not every variant that
rises to this level, it's ones that possess mutations
and that we're seeing spread more rapidly or spread in
a worrisome fashion that get this designation which then allows
us to really focus our efforts on characterizing the variant
to understand what it actually means in the real world
because a lot of this is based on looking at
the mutations and laboratory studies and then what you need
to do is then marry that with clinical data with
epidemiological data to know what it might mean. So
we're not too sure just yet how effective the vaccines
will be against this new variant. But from what
you understand of how potent the vaccine is. Do
you think that we would be in good shape or
is just this going to be a clear kind of
no block access to folks who are vaccinated or not
when it comes to the new variant? What I
suspect to be the case is that this variant might
be able to get around some of the immunity that's
engendered by vaccines and that's based on some of the
mutations that are present that were also present in other
variants of concern like the beta and gamma variant.
But what I don't think is going to be likely
is that the variant is going to be able to
erase all of the protection of vaccine gives you and
especially protection against what matters serious disease, hospitalization and
death because it's not just antibodies, it's also t
cells that play a major role in protecting against serious
illness. So I suspect there may be some dimunition
and protection against symptomatic disease but when it comes to
serious disease and hospitalization, I suspect the vaccines will
hold up pretty well. This is an important question
to answer and hopefully we'll get that answer within the
next couple of weeks. My last question is we
have heard many times that covid is more prevalent in
the winter. In fact cases have been creeping up
in the US and eu in recent weeks with this
new variant is this gonna be now a shoo in
for 1/5 wave or should we be okay? I
don't think we have enough information to say whether this
variant is going to herald a new wave. But
what we do know is that Covid like many other
respiratory viruses spreads more efficiently when it gets colder when
people go indoors and we have to expect the cases
are going to go up when the northern hemisphere enters
winter. That's just what seasonal coronavirus is doing.
This is looking like a seasonal coronavirus that's going to
be with us for a very, very long time
as it established itself in the human population. The
new variants may pose problems as we move forward because
they could cause surges and kind of get away from
a baseline level of covid that we may have.
And that's why it's really important to protect people by
getting them vaccinated. Because that's what we're trying to
do is tame this virus, shift its spectrum of
illness to the milder side. And the best way
to do that is to have everyone vaccinated, especially
those at high risk for hospitalization, dr Amish Adalja
, infectious disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns
Hopkins Center for Health and Security doctor. Thank you
as always