Fauci: Allowing virus to replicate could make 'worse variant' that 'could impact the vaccinated'
Fox News
Dr. Anthony Fauci has warned that allowing the coronavirus delta variant to circulate freely among unvaccinated individuals could lead to a more potent variant that could harm even vaccinated individuals.
So far, health officials have argued, and studies have shown, that vaccinated individuals remain protected from serious illness, hospitalization and death due to current variants of COVID-19. Fauci cautioned, however, that unvaccinated individuals will allow the virus to circulate and continue to mutate, potentially giving rise to a variant that could harm even vaccinated individuals. "There's a tenet that everybody knows in virology: a virus will not mutate unless you allow it to replicate," Fauci told NBC’s Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press." "Fortunately for us, the vaccines do quite well against delta, particularly in protecting you from severe disease, but if you give the virus the chance to continue to change, you're leading to a vulnerability that we might get a worse variant, and then that will impact not only the unvaccinated, that will impact the vaccinated because that variant could evade the protection of the vaccine."More Related News