{"id":28730,"date":"2021-01-22T11:08:48","date_gmt":"2021-01-22T11:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ceo-na.com\/?p=28730"},"modified":"2021-01-22T17:51:36","modified_gmt":"2021-01-22T17:51:36","slug":"time-is-of-the-essence-as-further-covid-19-variants-emerge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/business\/innovation-business\/time-is-of-the-essence-as-further-covid-19-variants-emerge\/","title":{"rendered":"Time is of the essence as further COVID-19 variants emerge"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the largest global vaccination program in history gets underway, an increasing number of COVID-19 variants are appearing around the world and adding renewed pressure.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

New, more contagious mutated variants of the coronavirus detected in various countries around the world are \u201chighly problematic\u201d and could cause more cases, deaths, and hospitalizations, the head of the World Health Organization warned on Monday.<\/span><\/p>\n

The WHO was alerted over the weekend to a new\u00a0COVID-19 strain discovered in Japan, Director-General Tedros\u00a0Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing. On Sunday, Japan\u2019s National Institute of Infectious Diseases said it discovered a new coronavirus variant in four travelers arriving from Brazil.<\/span><\/p>\n

The variant appears to have some of the same mutations as other strains discovered in the United Kingdom and South Africa, the institute said. Nevertheless, those mutations, while highly contagious, don\u2019t appear to make people more ill from the virus.<\/span><\/p>\n

The institute said it is yet to determine how infectious the new strain is or the effectiveness of existing vaccines against it.<\/span><\/p>\n

As viruses spread, they\u2019re expected to mutate over time as the spikes on their surfaces change, the\u00a0<\/span>Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says<\/span><\/a>. However, the CDC warns that it\u2019s not yet known how widespread the new mutations are.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe more the virus spreads, the higher the chance of new changes to the virus,\u201d Tedros said at the WHO\u2019s headquarters in Geneva.<\/strong> \u201cThis can drive a surge of cases and hospitalizations, which is highly problematic for health workers and hospitals already close to breaking point.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The implications of new variants of the\u00a0virus are potentially grave for the United States and Canada. Although the new variants do not appear to be deadlier or more able to evade vaccines than the original coronavirus, the data suggests they are certainly more transmissible. It makes the vaccination programs currently being rolled out internationally more urgent than ever.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Europe, countries are already extending and tightening lockdowns. If the new variant races through the United States, it could extinguish hopes of reopening schools and may encourage giving teachers higher priority for vaccination.<\/span><\/p>\n

It has been\u00a0suggested by some experts\u00a0that stretching out vaccination\u00a0doses and intervals, or giving people two different vaccines at\u00a0different times, might protect more individuals sooner. Nevertheless, it seems risky to gamble on new approaches not yet verified by clinical trials. In the long run it may be best to stick to the plan, but speed it up as much as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, a high priority must be to start clinical trials for alternative vaccination strategies with the goal of making the best use of every available tool to slow the pandemic. The appearance of new variants means that time is absolutely of the essence, even more so than before.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the largest global vaccination program in history gets underway, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":28731,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,1337],"tags":[529,99,1385,4385,1269,3696,1421,4384,3380],"class_list":["post-28730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-innovation-business","category-primezone","tag-canada","tag-ceo","tag-ceo-northam","tag-covid-19-variants","tag-europe","tag-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus","tag-united-states","tag-vaccination","tag-who"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28730"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28825,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28730\/revisions\/28825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}