OC outdoor sports resume today, experts say vaccines key to staying open, fighting off coronavirus mutations

UCI epidemiologist and director of the university’s Infectious Disease Science Initiative, Sanghyuk Shin disagreed with the approach, saying it’s too early to resume activities like sports because not enough people have been vaccinated yet while virus variants are emerging in Southern California. … Bernadette Boden-Albala, founding dean of UC Irvine’s public health program and  infectious disease expert who sits on the county’s vaccine task force, said government officials need to focus on getting vaccines out faster than the virus mutates, which could lead to a vaccine-resistant strain similar to the variant found in South Africa. … UCI epidemiologist and public health expert Andrew Noymer [said], “Get vaccinated, there will be less churn of the virus in the population and the rate of emergence of these new variants will slow down.”