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WASHINGTON: US authorities are “very carefully” scrutinizing the variant of the virus spreading in the UK, senior health officials said on Sunday (December 20), while noting that the UK travel ban would not it was currently on the cards.
The news came as a US panel of experts recommended that people 75 and older should be the next vaccinations against the virus, along with 30 million “essential front-line workers,” including teachers, employees of supermarkets and police.
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Addressing the virus variant, Moncef Slaoui, senior adviser to the government’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, told CNN’s State of the Union that US officials “don’t yet know” if it is present in the country.
“Of course, we are … looking at this very carefully,” including at the National Institutes of Health and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he said.
At the moment, he said, neither strain of the virus appears to be resistant to available vaccines.
“This particular variant in the UK, I think, is very unlikely to have escaped the immunity of the vaccine,” Slaoui said.
“I don’t think there is any reason to be alarmed at this point,” agreed Admiral Brett Giroir, the US official who oversees coronavirus testing, when asked about the new variant on ABC’s The Week.
When asked if the United States is likely to follow the lead of European countries that have suspended flights from the UK, Giroir replied: “I really don’t think we have to do that yet.”
Nearly eight million more doses of the COVID-19 vaccine will be shipped through the United States on Monday, Slaoui told CNN: two million from the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine and 5.9 million from the Moderna vaccine that was approved on Friday. .
“The first shot of Moderna is most likely tomorrow morning,” he said.
THE OUTBREAK MAY GET WORSE
The US Centers for Disease Control says 2.8 million doses of vaccines were distributed during the past week, while 556,208 doses were administered.
While Vice President Mike Pence has done so publicly and President-elect Joe Biden will do so on Monday, President Donald Trump has so far not indicated that he will be vaccinated soon.
With vaccine skepticism a concern, Giroir encouraged Trump to do so for his own health, “and also to build more trust among the people who follow him so closely.”
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More than 316,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States, with daily new infections regularly exceeding 200,000 and deaths hovering around 3,000 people every 24 hours.
With vaccines on the move, there is light at the end of the tunnel, but Slaoui warned the situation will “get worse” before improving, citing an increase after Thanksgiving and the upcoming year-end holidays.
Later that day, an advisory panel from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control voted to recommend which groups should be in the second wave of vaccines after initial doses focused on front-line healthcare workers and the elderly in nursing homes.
It recommended “essential frontline workers” along with those over 75.
The panel estimates that there are some 30 million people in the essential frontline worker category, ranging from teachers to postal workers, police officers and firefighters.
A next phase would see those between 65 and 74 years old alongside other essential workers among those receiving doses, according to the recommendations.
CDC will decide later whether to adopt the recommendations, while individual states can ultimately choose how to distribute their vaccines.
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