A new and more contagious strain of the coronavirus makes mitigation measures — face masks, social distancing, and hand-washing — even more important, Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said Sunday.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Adams said the strain found in California, Florida, and Colorado does not appear to be more deadly than COVID-19, nor resistant to current therapeutics and the vaccine.
“We do not, so far, feel that this new strain or these new strains will be resistant to the vaccines or to the therapeutics that we have available. So that is good news,” he said.
“And it looks like these new strains may be more contagious, even if they are not more deadly, it means that it's even more important that we follow these basic public health measures and that we get people vaccinated as quickly as possible,” he said.
Adams also pushed back that the vaccine rollout was failure, saying 20 million doses of vaccine were delivered, though 4 million have been administered.
“You're always going to have more … delivered versus shots in arms,” he said, citing the current surge of COVID-19 cases and the end-of-year holidays as strains on the rollout.
“One million doses [given] in the last 72 hours is meaningful change,” he said. “We are working with the governors and working with everyone to improve upon the process ... As [infectious disease expert and coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony] Fauci said, this was always going to be the most difficult rollout in history even if it wasn't superimposed on a surge in the holiday season.”
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