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CMAAO Corona Facts and Myth - Brazil’s Covid crisis is a warning

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Dr KK Aggarwal    07 March 2021

1.     One of the worst outbreaks in the world; now the country is battling a more contagious variant that may cause reinfection.

2.      Challenges include limited testing and slow vaccine rollout.

3.     On Tuesday, over 1,700 Covid-19 deaths were recorded, Brazil’s highest single-day toll during this pandemic.

4.      Studies have suggested that a variant that swept through the city of Manaus may probably re-infect certain individuals who have already recovered from other versions of the virus. This variant has been identified in about two dozen other countries, including the U.S.

1431: The United States must stick to a two-dose strategy for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, top U.S. infectious disease official Anthony Fauci told the Washington Post newspaper. He warned that ‘shifting to a single-dose strategy for the vaccines could leave people less protected, enable variants to spread and possibly boost skepticism among Americans already hesitant to get the shots.’

1432:  Variants on the rise in New York City contain the same E484K mutation seen in variants in Brazil and South Africa that may render COVID-19 vaccines and antibody therapies less effective, as well as a mutation known as S477N that may help the virus to bind more tightly to cells when it breaks into them.

A report by New York State Department of Health researchers posted on Monday on medRxiv ahead of peer review that all versions of the variant circulating in New York harbor a mutation called D235G that might reduce the efficacy of neutralizing antibodies.

The variant “has increased in the circulating virus population in New York state by almost 26-fold in a little over a month.”

The combination of E484K or S477N with a D253G mutation might confer immune escape, and the increased number of COVID-19 cases associated with these variants, warrants further monitoring.


Dr KK Aggarwal

President CMAAO, HCFI and Past National President IMA

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