Vaccination is not enough to stop the spread of variants

Vaccination alone won't stop the rise of new variants and in fact could push the evolution of strains that evade their protection, researchers warned Friday.They said people need to wear masks and take other steps to prevent spread until almost everyone in a population has been vaccinated.

Their findings, published in Nature Scientific Reports,even fully vaccinated people to start wearing masks again in areas of sustained or high transmission.

"When most people are vaccinated, the vaccine-resistant strain has an advantage over the original strain," Simon Rella,who worked on the study, told reporters.

This means the vaccine resistant strain spreads through the population faster at a time when most people are vaccinated.

But if so-called non pharmaceutical interventions are maintained -- such as mask use and social distancing -- the virus is less likely to spread and change. "There is a chance to remove the vaccine resistant mutations from the population," Rella said.

The team used a mathematical model to predict these changes, but their findings follow what is known about the epidemiology of viruses and what's known as selective pressure.

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