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OFFICIALS have said they will not conduct ground flights between the United States and the United Kingdom despite the spread of the mutant strain Covid, as Europe closes its doors.
Moncef Slaoui, senior advisor to the government’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, told CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ that US officials “don’t yet know” if the variant is present in the country.
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“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 added, no strain of the Covid-19 virus appears to be resistant to available vaccines.
“I think it is highly unlikely that this particular variant in the UK has escaped the immunity of the vaccine,” Slaoui said.
“I don’t think there is any reason to be alarmed at this point,” said 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 was likely to follow the lead of European countries suspending flights from the UK, Giroir said: “I really don’t think we have to do that yet.”
President Donald Trump is said to be considering lifting the US travel ban to the UK and Europe starting next week, according to reports on Friday.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called for an end to flights from the UK, calling the US action on the new strain “reprehensible.”
“There is a disturbing story coming out of the UK of a highly contagious new variant of the Covid-19 virus,” he said on Sunday.
“Several countries have banned people from the UK, and 120 countries require that before taking a flight into the UK to come to their country, it must have tested negative.
“The United States has several flights arriving from the United Kingdom every day and we have done absolutely nothing.
“For me, this is reprehensible because this is what happened in the spring.”
Sources within the travel industry told The Telegraph that Trump was expected to sign an executive order lifting the travel ban on Tuesday.
Several European countries have already imposed a travel ban from the UK.
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France has joined Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Israel and El Salvador in banning all flights carrying passengers from British airports.
A spokeswoman for the UK Department of Transport said that “restarting transatlantic flights is vitally important for the economic recovery of the UK and the US, the airline industry and for British citizens, most of whom they cannot enter the U.S.
“British officials continue to seek resolution to this problem.”
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