Fauci: UK variant will likely become more 'dominant' in US
At Friday’s White House press briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci said the United Kingdom variant will likely become more “dominant” in the U.S. toward the end of March or early April.
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There are 379 confirmed cases across 29 states of the B117 strain of the coronavirus, according to CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
Fauci indicated that the evolving nature of the virus is something the medical community will have to continue dealing with going forward.
“Even though the long-range effect in the sense of severe disease is still handled reasonably well by the vaccines, this is a wake-up call to all of us, that we will be dealing, as the virus uses its devices to evade pressure, particularly immunological pressure, that we will continue to see the evolution of mutants,” he said.
![PHOTO: A researcher at Aalborg University stands behind a safety screen to screen and analyze all positive Danish coronavirus samples for the virus variant cluster B117 from the United Kingdom, in Aalborg, Denmark, Jan. 15, 2021.](https://s.abcnews.com/images/Health/covid-1-gty-ml-210129_1611944676316_hpEmbed_3x2_992.jpg)
Fauci also indicated that the fight to contain the new variants will impact the vaccine response.
“We, as a government, the companies, all of us that are in this together, will have to be nimble to be able to just adjust readily to make versions of the vaccine that actually are specifically directed towards whatever mutation is actually prevalent at any given time,” he said.
ABC News’ Matthew Vann contributed to this report.