Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2020 20:51:48 GMT -5
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Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on Sunday that a new strain of COVID-19 believed to have originated in the U.K. is “probably here” in the U.S.
“Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan asked Gottlieb if he thought the measures that the federal government has taken to fight the new strain by requiring negative COVID-19 tests from all air passengers arriving from the U.K. would have an impact.
“Well, I think it's probably here in the United States, and it could be here in a reasonable number at this point,” Gottlieb responded.
Gottlieb said the U.S. needs a better way to sequence and track the strains of the coronavirus that are currently circulating.
"We don't sequence a lot of samples in this country, and a lot of that sequencing that does get done gets done in private labs and doesn't get aggregated into public databases. That needs to be fixed," Gottlieb said. "In the U.K., they're sequencing about 10 percent of all the samples. Here we're doing a fraction of 1 percent."
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Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on Sunday that a new strain of COVID-19 believed to have originated in the U.K. is “probably here” in the U.S.
“Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan asked Gottlieb if he thought the measures that the federal government has taken to fight the new strain by requiring negative COVID-19 tests from all air passengers arriving from the U.K. would have an impact.
“Well, I think it's probably here in the United States, and it could be here in a reasonable number at this point,” Gottlieb responded.
Gottlieb said the U.S. needs a better way to sequence and track the strains of the coronavirus that are currently circulating.
"We don't sequence a lot of samples in this country, and a lot of that sequencing that does get done gets done in private labs and doesn't get aggregated into public databases. That needs to be fixed," Gottlieb said. "In the U.K., they're sequencing about 10 percent of all the samples. Here we're doing a fraction of 1 percent."
