“It’s certainly not good news. We don’t know yet how much of an impact this will have. It ought to redouble our efforts, to use the tools that we have, which are vaccinations and boosters, and to be sure we’re getting those to the rest of the world, too, which the US is doing more than any other country,” NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” referring to the new variant, named Omicron.
“It also means we need to pay attention to those mitigation strategies that people are just really sick of, like wearing masks while indoors with other people who might not be vaccinated and keeping that social distance issue,” he added. “We have to use every kind of tool in our toolbox to keep (Omicron) from getting in a situation that makes this worse.”
The comments from Collins come as public health experts, including those working in the Biden administration, are still attempting to learn more about the new variant, which is circulating in southern Africa and has been detected in Europe and Asia. President Joe Biden said on Friday that the US will restrict travel from South Africa and seven other countries starting Monday in an effort to prevent the new variant from spreading to the US.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
