California has had a slow start to COVID-19 vaccine rollout, but there has been some progress.
On KCBS Radio's "Ask an Expert" segment Tuesday, Dr. Yvonne Maldonado said she's "optimistic" that with continued precautions and administering of vaccines, we may see progress on so-called community or herd immunity.
"We need to keep messaging that we still can do some activities and we can still get outdoors and have some outdoor dining," Dr. Maldonado said.
Although there are now several commonly found variants of the COVID-19 virus, Dr. Maldonado said we are most likely to see the B.117, more commonly known as the "U.K. variant," become the dominant variant in the U.S. by March.
Dr. Maldonado said that the B.117 variant does indicate "some decreased responsiveness to the vaccine."
B.1.351 has not been found in California so far, which Maldonado explained is a good thing, since the AstraZeneca vaccine has been found to be far less effective against that variant. She said that there may be some increased severity in symptoms associated with the B.117 variant, although this conclusion was based on just one paper and doctors "don’t really know that for sure."
"I do think there might be another surge coming, some people think that it will happen in another four to eight weeks or sometime in spring," she said. "If we're careful about behavior and we can get more vaccines in we might tamper that down a bit."
Despite this expected surge, Dr. Maldonado said a big variable in predicting ongoing spread will be how quickly vaccines are given out and how diligent we are at staying apart.
Related
LISTEN NOW on the RADIO.COM App
Follow RADIO.COM
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram