Surgeon-General Dr. Jerome Adams, appearing on Sunday’s “Face the Nation” Dec. 20, urged all Americans to follow basic public health measures, including getting vaccinated, to beat the COVID pandemic. He and other officials said not enough is known about the new mutation, or variant, of the COVID virus to change any plans or public health requirements. “The most relevant point is that it doesn’t change anything we’ve been telling you,” Dr. Adams said. “It just further reinforces the fact that we need to wash our hands, wear a mask, watch our distances, keep our household gathering small, because if this is a mutation that is more contagious, then that just means that we need to be that much more vigilant while we wait to get vaccinated.”
At another point in the interview, the Surgeon-General amplified on the mutation: “Very important for people to know that viruses mutate all the time, and that does not mean that this virus is any more dangerous. We don’t even know if it’s really more contagious yet or not, or if it just happened to be a strain that was involved in a super spreader event. Right now, we have no indications that it is going to hurt our ability to continue vaccinating people or that it is any more dangerous or deadly than the strains that are currently out there and that we know about.”
