Experts Say Vaccines Will Not Be Enough to End COVID-19 Pandemic

March 31, 2021 13:21:07

As the coronavirus vaccines become more accessible in the United States, two infectious disease experts from Georgetown University Medical Center assert that protecting oneself against the presymptomatic and asymptomatic spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the coronavirus, is the key to ending the pandemic.

Both from the Georgetown University Center for Global Health Science and Security, Saskia V. Popescu and Angela L. Rasmussen published their research on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 without symptoms in the “Science” journal on March 19. The researchers both claim that the symptomless transmission of the virus silently increases the spread of the virus and is crucial to putting an end to the pandemic.

In their research, the authors stated that determining the transmission capability of presymptomatic and asymptomatic cases was complicated, adding that despite this, knowledge gaps shouldn’t keep researchers from recognizing the role they play in the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

The coronavirus is a serious acute respiratory syndrome that has a long incubation period and spreads even among individuals who don’t know that they are infected. Rasmussen stated that while vaccines were great at protecting individuals against various ailments, people shouldn’t rely on vaccination alone to control the coronavirus pandemic, noting that no one knows how well the vaccines will work to protect people against transmission.

She added that from a biological perspective, it is highly unlikely that a vaccine that protected well against ailments would not protect against infections. However, while the vaccines do offer protection, they don’t provide 100% protection against getting sick, which means that they also aren’t 100% likely to offer protection against viral transmission.

In addition, while vaccines will become widely accessible in the United States by the time summer comes around, this will not be the case for the rest of the world, where the pandemic rages on unrelentingly.

Popescu noted that presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission of the virus posed a challenge to efforts to prevent the number of infections from growing. In the long run, Popescu stated, the virus is something that would need to continuously be observed as the world sees a decrease in the rate of infection because of vaccinations and goes into the next phase of the coronavirus pandemic.

Popescu and Rasmussen came to the conclusion that until there was extensive implementation of strong epidemiological and surveillance measures that would allow officials to put an end to transmission once and for all, the coronavirus pandemic could not be fully stamped out.

The research community isn’t only engaged in finding solutions to the coronavirus scourge. Plenty of research effort is also being directed at different forms of cancer, and CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) has made it its mission to seek for remedies to cancers that afflict the brain as well as the central nervous system.

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