White House suggests COVID-19 vaccines effective against 'lambda' variant
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The White House issued a vote of confidence Tuesday that the COVID-19 vaccines are effective against a new virus variant that has caused concern among health experts.
At issue is the so-called “lambda variant,” which the World Health Organization has called a “variant of interest” because it has mutated in a way that could make it more easily passed among humans and may not be nixed by the “neutralizing antibodies” inside the body that the vaccines produce.
“That’s why we’ve been focusing so much” on trying to convince more and more people, including vaccine skeptics such as some conservatives and minority groups, to get vaccinated, press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.
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Global health officials have also downplayed the lambda variant as a major new threat as the pandemic begins to wane in the United States and across the world.
"So far, we have seen no indication that the lambda variant is more aggressive," Jairo Mendez-Rico, a WHO virologist, told a German media outlet. "It is possible that it may exhibit higher infection rates, but we don't yet have enough reliable data to compare it to gamma or delta."
The delta variant is now the most common variant infecting people in the U.S., contributing to an uptick in daily cases as people return to offices, sporting events, bars, restaurants, and other public (and sometimes crowded) places.
Though President Joe Biden presided over a celebratory event at the White House when he announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dropped its masking guidance, the administration plans to “battle the virus for some time,” with an approach that Psaki said would be molded “week by week” and “month to month.”
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Biden missed his goal of having 70% of adults vaccinated by the Fourth of July, but Psaki said the administration’s vaccine effort would “press on.”
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Tags: News, Coronavirus, Jen Psaki, Joe Biden, White House, Healthcare, Vaccination
Original Author: John T. Bennett
Original Location: White House suggests COVID-19 vaccines effective against 'lambda' variant
