White House coronavirus testing chief Adm. Brett Giroir said the coronavirus vaccines rolling out in the United States are effective against “any variant we’ve seen,” including a new fast-spreading strain identified in the United Kingdom, which has led to travel bans across Europe.
“We have every reason to believe that the vaccine will be effective,” Giroir told CNN’s John Berman. “We will be able to prove that in a short period of time, but there’s no reason for catastrophic thinking because the vaccine is coming.”
Giroir said he was “not trying to downplay” the new strain of the virus but emphasized that there is no evidence suggesting the new strain is more deadly than the one already ravaging the U.S. and much of Europe.
“What there is no evidence of, nor reason to believe — it is not any more lethal or any more dangerous than the normal coronavirus,” Giroir said. “No evidence to suggest that. No reason to believe it. There is also no evidence to suggest, nor reason to believe, that it would evade our vaccines that we have right now.”
Giroir said the CDC has not made any plans to institute a travel ban on the U.K., adding that the strain was first identified in September, so it “could be in the United States, and we might not have detected it yet.”
More than 40 countries across the world have already implemented bans on U.K. travel. On Monday, Britain’s ITV News reported that the entire European Union would impose a lockdown on travel to or from the U.K., with the potential exception of cargo trucks.
Giroir’s comments echoed those of Dr. Moncef Slaoui, who heads Operation Warp Speed’s vaccine program. Slaoui told CNN on Sunday that he didn’t think “there has been a single variant [that] would be resistant to the vaccines being developed.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson held an emergency meeting with Cabinet members on Monday to address the joint crises of the new variant and the economic fallout of travel and important bans. As a result of France’s 48-hour shipment ban, trucks remain backed up at the port of Dover in southeast England, and Kent police closed sections of the country’s M20 highway to “avoid gridlock” around the Eurotunnel.
