A SHOT OF HOPE

COMMON symptoms of COVID-19 include fever, cough, headaches, fatigue, and muscle or body aches. People with COVID-19 may also lose their sense of smell or taste. Symptoms usually appear two to 14 days after being exposed to the virus.

But even people who don’t seem sick can still infect others. The CDC estimates that people spread 50% of infections with no symptoms. While some with this virus develop life-threatening illness, others have mild symptoms, and some never develop any.

Catching the virus is more dangerous for some groups of people. This includes older adults and people with certain medical conditions. These medical conditions include obesity, diabetes, heart and lung disease, and asthma. About 40% of Americans have at least one of these risk factors.

Getting Treatment

Better COVID-19 treatments mean that fewer people now get severely sick if they catch the virus. Scientists have been working to test available drugs against the virus. They’ve found at least two that can help people who are hospitalized with the virus.

A drug called remdesivir can reduce the time a patient spends in the hospital. A steroid called dexamethasone helps stop the immune system from reacting too strongly to the virus. That can damage body tissues and organs.

Antibody treatments are also available. Antibodies are proteins that your body makes to fight germs. Scientists have learned how to make them in the lab. Antibody treatments can block SARS-CoV-2 to prevent the illness from getting worse. They seem to have the most benefit when given early in the disease.

“Antibody treatments really do have the potential to help people, especially for treating individuals who are not yet hospitalized,” says Dr. Mark Heise, who studies the genetics of viruses at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Heise is working to develop mouse models to test treatments and vaccines.

Studies are now testing combinations of treatments. “Combining drugs that target both the virus and the person’s immune response may help treat COVID-19,” says Heise. Scientists are also looking for new drugs that better target the virus.

Vaccines

It used to take a decade or more to develop a new vaccine. In this pandemic, scientists created COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year.

The first two vaccines approved for emergency use are from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech. Moderna’s vaccine was co-developed with NIH scientists. Both are a new type of vaccine called mRNA vaccines. mRNA carries the genetic information for your body to make proteins.

The vaccines direct the body’s cells to make a piece of the virus called the spike protein. These proteins can’t cause illness by themselves. But they teach your immune system to make antibodies against the protein. If you encounter the virus later, the antibodies provide protection against it.

The mRNA vaccines now available were shown to be more than 90% effective in large clinical trials. They can cause side effects—such as fatigue, muscle aches, joint pain, and headache. But both vaccines were found to be safe in the clinical trials.

“Get vaccinated. The vaccines are safe. They’re incredibly effective,” says Dr. Jason McLellan, an expert on coronaviruses at the University of Texas at Austin. McLellan’s research was critical in developing these vaccines. His team, along with NIH scientists, figured out how to lock the shape of the spike protein to make the most effective antibodies.

As the pandemic has gone on, new versions of the virus, or variants, have appeared. “We’re all very confident that vaccines will continue to work well against these variants,” McLellan says. “Vaccination also helps stop the development of new variants, because it provides fewer opportunities for the virus to change as it replicates.”

Many people will need to be vaccinated for the pandemic to end. Fauci estimates that 70% to 85% of the U.S. population will need to be vaccinated to get “herd immunity.” That is the point where enough people are immune to the virus to prevent its spread. That’s important because it protects vulnerable people who can’t get vaccinated.

“It is my hope that all Americans will protect themselves by getting vaccinated when the vaccine becomes available to them,” Fauci says. “That is how our country will begin to heal and move forward.” *BTNewspaper/dwi/who