The White House coronavirus testing czar said Sunday that the new coronavirus strain making the disease more transmissible is no match for the vaccines that are already being rolled out.
“We have no evidence that suggests, nor do we believe, that ... the vaccine would not be effective,” Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Brett Giroir told anchor Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “In other words, we do believe the vaccine will be effective against this variant.”
Giroir, sworn into his role at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2018, said states would ultimately determine who is next in line for vaccination after health care workers and nursing home residents.
He added that it’s safe for children to return to school even before being immunized, as studies are still being done on the vaccine’s safety for kids.
Other experts have expressed similar confidence in the vaccines’ efficacy in recent days. The head of drugmaker AstaZeneca, developer of the third vaccine that will most likely be approved in the U.K. this week, said Sunday that the company will test the vaccine against the new variant but expects it to hold up, The Associated Press reported.
The new strain was discovered in the U.K. earlier this month as cases spiked there. It has since been found in other parts of Europe.
However, the mutation doesn’t make the virus more lethal or dangerous, just easier to catch, health experts say. The characteristics of the virus that the vaccine targets are not what is changed.
Moreover, it’s routine for viruses to mutate, as one public health expert noted.
“Should we keep our eye on it? Absolutely,” Dr. Catherine Blish, an infectious disease expert at Stanford University, told ABC News. “But also, this is not surprising in any way. Viruses mutate, it’s what they do. It’s part of their natural evolution.”
