WASHINGTON, D.C. — White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, is asking Americans to continue following Centers for Disease Control guidelines as the vaccine rollout continues and a new mutation is discovered.
While the CDC is not moving to halt travel from the United Kingdom as a new strain of the coronavirus rapidly spreads in Britain, Birx says American health officials are keeping an eye on these mutations.
"It's constantly mutating, most likely like other RNA viruses like HIV. It's constantly looking at how to adapt to us to be more effective in transmitting itself between humans. The good news is all the precautions we want people to take for the holidays: the masking, the physical distancing, not gathering across households, and not bringing in friends and family will prevent both a highly transmissible virus as well as all of our current viruses from being transmitted," said Birx in an interview with Spectrum News 1 Tuesday.
The CDC says the UK variant has not been found in the U.S. yet and adds the virus would need multiple mutations to become vaccine resistant.
With nearly every Kentucky county in the red zone, Birx says the availability of the Moderna vaccine will allow for more people in rural America to get vaccinated.
"I already see by the number of sites that the Moderna vaccine is going to versus the number of sites that the Pfizer vaccine went to, that will really allow it to get into those more rural areas," said Birx.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), known for his contrarian views on Capitol Hill, has argued it doesn't make sense for those who have already been infected to be among the first to get vaccinated but Birx says his argument doesn't take into consideration the uniqueness of COVID-19.
"Many of the cases and perhaps most of the cases in people under 40 were asymptomatic. They were never diagnosed. It would really be logistically difficult to screen everybody before they were vaccinated to see if they had been infected in the past, and make that determination to get this vaccine out quickly to those who need it the most," said Birx.
Despite Birx's repeated calls for Americans not to travel, she did visit one of her homes in Delaware around Thanksgiving, a decision she explained was more complicated than it appeared.
"It was by personal vehicle for two and a half hours to a house that we had just settled on November 18. I wasn't there for the settlement. The reason we purchased that home was to provide a place where my daughter could get respite from her continuous eldercare and being 32 weeks pregnant. We didn't mix households. We isolated in that house. We took all of our food. It was no different than being in Washington in our own house. But that said, because of the perception and how that was utilized to really traumatize my family and my extended family where it has caused deep difficulties within the families, to make sure that doesn't happen again, we won't utilize that house," said Birx.
Though some, like Sen. Paul, have challenged the efficiency of cloth masks, Birx says they continue to be a reliable tool to stop the spread of the virus.
"They're all very good at preventing if I'm infected from preventing transmission to you. There may be a difference in our ability to keep ourselves protected between cloth masks and surgical masks, and those N95 masks and those K95 masks. But the differences if we're all masked, are much smaller. That's really the key issue is to ensure that everybody is wearing a mask, because that is the only way to ensure that we protect each other."
When asked if she wanted to stay on to serve in the Biden administration, Birx said if it is felt that she can be useful, she will remain for an orderly transition.