The New Variant: “It’s Still Early Days”

Squawk Pod

CNBC

Business News, News, Investing, Business

4.2 • 543 Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2021

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The World Health Organization will meet today to discuss a new heavily-mutated variant of Covid-19. The variant has been detected in small numbers in South Africa, with reports of cases in Israel and Hong Kong. CNBC’s Meg Tirrell reports on how Covid-19 drugmakers like Moderna and Pfizer are responding to the variant. Dr. Kavita Patel, former White House health policy director and fellow at the Brookings Institution, also reacts to the new variant but says we shouldn’t “get ahead of ourselves” just yet. NBC’s Raf Sanchez reports from Tel Aviv that Israel has barred travel to several southern African nations over the new variant, as well as Singapore and several other nations. The U.K. immediately moved to ban flights from South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Namibia, Eswatini and Zimbabwe. Plus, Priceline CEO Brett Keller discusses holiday travel demand, and how the coronavirus variant could impact bookings. In this episode: Kavita Patel, @kavitapmd Meg Tirrell, @megtirrell Brett Keller, @priceline Raf Sanchez, @rafsanchez Becky Quick, @BeckyQuick Andrew Ross Sorkin, @andrewrsorkin Cameron Costa, @CameronCostaNY

Transcript

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0:00.0	Bring in show music please.
0:03.0	This is Squawk Pod and I'm C&DC producer Cameron Costa.
0:08.0	Today in our podcast, a new COVID variant.
0:12.0	What is it? How are governments responding to it and how worried
0:16.0	should we be?
0:17.0	CNPC's Meg Terrell. The main concerns with this new variant are the number of mutations
0:21.6	on the spike protein,
0:22.7	some of which could potentially be associated
0:24.7	with increased transmissibility,
0:26.3	others potentially with the ability
0:28.1	to evade vaccine protection.
0:30.2	Although it's still early days,
0:32.4	says Dr. Kavita Patel at least in the United States I wouldn't start you know putting in broad policies and lockdowns and getting out ahead of ourselves
0:41.0	So holiday vacations abroad might be riskier but where there's
0:45.8	a will there's a way. Priceline CEO Brett Keller. This may shut down some
0:51.0	international travel between a few countries at first, but really what's
0:54.4	going to happen is people continue to find ways to travel locally.
0:58.8	Those conversations, plus, were on the ground in Israel, where one of the first cases outside of South Africa was
1:04.9	detected. It's Friday, November 26, 2021. Squack Cloud begins right now.
1:15.0	we all assumed that today like every other Friday after Thanksgiving would be a Black Friday
1:21.4	focus retail retail retail with a side of food coma.
1:26.0	This morning, though, we woke up to a global market sell-off.
	...

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