Chief adviser: Unclear if U.S. has mutation

The U.S. doesn’t need to suspend flights from the U.K. based on a coronavirus mutation that helped prompt an emergency lockdown for London, a member of the White House virus task force said.

“I really don’t believe we need to do that yet,” Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

Giroir and Vivek Murthy, President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for surgeon general, both expressed confidence that vaccines developed to fight COVID-19, two of which are already approved for use in the U.S., will be effective against the mutated form of the virus.

It’s not clear whether a more transmissible variant of the coronavirus that prompted the tighter restrictions in the U.K. has made its way to the U.S., said Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for the government’s vaccine acceleration program, Operation Warp Speed.

“We don’t know. We’re looking at that,” Slaoui said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Giroir, a pediatrician by training, questioned the severity of the threat cited by U.K. leaders, saying the coronavirus blamed for COVID-19 has already mutated more than 4,000 times since its discovery.

“We don’t know that it’s more dangerous, and very importantly we have not seen a single mutation yet that would make it evade the vaccine,” he said. While that can’t be ruled out for the future, “I don’t think there should be any reason for alarm right now,” Giroir said.

Murthy said that while the mutation seen in the U.K. seems to be more easily transmissible, “we do not have evidence yet that this is a more deadly virus to an individual who acquires it.”

“There’s no reason to believe that the vaccines that have been developed will not be effective against this virus as well,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The variant seems to be more contagious, though probably not more lethal, Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner under President Donald Trump and a Pfizer board member, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

It will “probably not” be able to get around immunity acquired by people who have had COVID-19 or around existing vaccines, Gottlieb said.

Even if the variant does become more widespread, Slaoui said the vaccines now rolling out will provide protection against it. That includes the Moderna vaccine that received approval from U.S. regulators Friday. Slaoui said the first Moderna shots are expected to be administered Monday.

The new strain was identified in southeastern England in September and has been spreading in the area ever since, a WHO official told the BBC on Sunday.