Should you worry about the spread of coronavirus variants around the country? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Sars-CoV2 variants are spreading apace around the US and the world, even as scientists race to assess whether currently available vaccines will provide protection against them. Brian Garibaldi, a critical care medicine expert at Johns Hopkins, says the presence of variants is not his primary concern.

Garibaldi: With the variants right now, I’m not worried about the ones that are circulating in terms of preventing us from being safe if you’ve been vaccinated, but the longer we allow high levels of community circulation of this virus, the more likely it is that there is going to be a variant that eventually is going to emerge that is going to start infecting people at a higher rate who have been vaccinated, and then we’re going to have to start the process all over again. And I think having this degree of community spread in our country but also if you look at what’s happening in India and Brazil, those are going to be hotbeds of variants if we don’t get things under control.  :31

The advice remains to keep up distancing, masks, and avoiding crowds, Garibaldi notes, and getting vaccinated as soon as possible. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.