The US is monitoring the new strain of Covid emerging in the UK, multiple US officials said on Sunday, adding that it was unclear whether the mutated variant had made its way to America. “We don’t know yet.
The US is monitoring the new strain of Covid emerging in the UK, multiple US officials said on Sunday, adding that it was unclear whether the mutated variant had made its way to America.
“We don’t know yet. We are looking very carefully into this,” US Covid vaccine programme head Dr Moncef Slaoui told CNN.
Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, added that the UK mutation was “very unlikely” to be resistant to current vaccines. Other officials from the Trump administration and the incoming Biden administration also said they were watching the strain.
Asked about the potential impact on US-UK travel, assistant US health secretary Admiral Brett Giroir told ABC News: “I don’t think there should be any reason for alarm right now.” He added that a third vaccine — one developed by Johnson & Johnson and Janssen — could get US approval by next month.
Source: Reuters Image credit : mint
Comments