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The U.S. government, including the Pentagon, is studying coronavirus changes to monitor their impact on Covid-19 vaccines and medications, said the new head of the Centers for Control and Prevention Disease.
“We are now stepping up both our scrutiny of these and our scrutiny of these,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told Fox News Sunday. “The agency is working with others, including the Department of Defense and the Food and Drug Administration, to monitor the variables,” she said.
Vivek Murthy, President Joe Biden’s nominee for general surgeon, said that gaining widespread protection against the crown virus before the start of the school year in September is “an ambitious goal,” ”And that new strains of the disease require continued shelter, social pace and better government tracking.
“This is going to do a lot of work,” Murthy said on “This week. “Many schools don’t have the facilities to open now,” he said. “I think we can find a way to open schools more safely.”
In Chicago, teachers wanted to return to the classroom voting this weekend on a resolution to work remotely only, setting the stage for a possible strike in the U.S. ‘s third largest school.
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Murthy said schools also need to reopen as the numbers of Covid cases fall, which depends on the Biden administration ‘s goal of delivering 100 million vaccines in the first 100 days in office.
“That’s a floor, it’s not a roof,” he said. “It’s also a goal that reflects our future. ”
Murthy said different strains of the virus that start to appear are “more likely to be transmitted.”
Read more: Biden Ramps Up Covid Fight With Orders Nixing Trump Policies
“We still need more data” on deaths, he said, adding that the biggest lesson is that “the virus basically tells us that it will continue to change and we need to be prepared for it. ”
That plan needs better genomic analysis, he said, and doubles down on hiding and social distance.
Various South Africans
“We need to invest a lot more in testing and in finding communications,” Murthy said. “We are in a race against these changes, the virus is about to change, and it is up to change and make sure we stay on. ”
Anthony Fauci, Biden ‘s chief medical adviser, renewed concern about a mutant circulating in South Africa, saying that it “looks like it is declining further and therefore efficiency is increasing. vaccine. ”
“But we are still within that quiet level of vaccines being effective against these mutants,” he told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “Having said that, we will take a look at this and follow this carefully as these things grow. ”
(Updates with Fauci’s comments in the last two paragraphs.)