Rethinking Our COVID-19 Strategy

• Main Author: Samuel Brauer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Andover House Inc. 2021-03-01
• Series: Precision Nanomedicine
• Online Access: https://prnano.scholasticahq.com/article/21569-rethinking-our-covid-19-strategy.pdf

As of Feb 21, 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic claimed over half a million lives in the U.S., and over half of the country's population has likely had an infection. Our strategy to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic to date has been to rely very heavily on vaccination while testing and anti-viral development was given the short shrift. Initial results of vaccines appeared promising, but there have been increased numbers of new variants than expected due to a high effective muta-tion rate. These new variants show the strong possibility of mutational escape from existing an-tibodies, whether these antibodies are generated from natural infection or a vaccine. Increasing infection rates in Manaus, Brazil, has shown that even high seroprevalence from previous infec-tion waves may not block these new variants. The development of new vaccines for COVID-19 has now become exponentially more challenging for several reasons. Given our partial success with the current vaccination strategy, it is time to revisit the idea of antiviral development com-bined with significantly increased testing as a means of controlling this pandemic. Only a more balanced strategy involving all available control technologies: testing, antiviral drugs, and vac-cination will effectively end this pandemic