U.S. officials eye new COVID-19 strain in UK, urge vigilance

[December 21, 2020]  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is monitoring the new strain of COVID-19 emerging in the United Kingdom, multiple U.S. 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, of course... looking very carefully into this," U.S. COVID-19 vaccine program head Dr. Moncef Slaoui told CNN's "State of the Union" program.

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, saying: "We can't exclude it, but it's not there now."

Other health officials from the outgoing Trump administration and the incoming Biden administration also said they were watching the strain rapidly spreading in Great Britain. The new UK variant appears 70% more transmissible, forcing new lockdown measures in Britain and travel restrictions from its European neighbors.

U.S. President Donald Trump's Surgeon General Jerome Adams said while mutating viruses were not unusual, any new COVID-19 strain means Americans must be more vigilant about washing hands, wearing masks, keeping distance and avoiding crowds.

"Right now, we have no indication that it is going to hurt our ability to continue to vaccinate people or that it is any more dangerous or deadly than the strains that are currently out there that we know about it," Adams told CBS News' "Face the Nation" program.

Nurse Carolina Garcia, 36, is seen through the window taking care of her father, Jose Garcia, 67, who is currently intubated and sedated due to COVID-19 during a surge of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases at Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico, U.S. November 29, 2020. REUTERS/Paul Ratje

Asked about the potential impact on U.S.-UK travel, Assistant U.S. Health Secretary Admiral Brett Giroir told ABC News' "This Week" program: "I don't think there should be any reason for alarm right now. We continue to watch."

"We don't know that it's more dangerous," Giroir, a White House Coronavirus Task Force member, added. "Right now, it looks like the vaccine should cover everything that we see."

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Idrees Ali; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Lisa Shumaker)

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