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Confirming they too now have cases of omicron. all those cases in travelers who recently returned from southern africa. they are part of that rapidly growing list of nations that have identified the variant within their borders. also on that list, the uk, which has two cases. prime minister boris johnson just wrapped up a press conference in london where he announced tighter border restrictions to try to slow what he called the seeding of the variant inside the uk. from now on, if you're landing in britain, you're going to have to go into self-isolation for two days until you can produce a neg...

Went very far. so, that's one -- that's still one possible scenario. one that the vaccines still protect quite well and this still may not be -- just because there are a lot of mutations in the spike protein, doesn't mean it's spreading. there is concern that it's gone up precipitously in one province of south africa where pretorian johannesburg is. i think we have to have some words of caution here, not to -- we're not ready to press the panic button yet. there's a lot we don't know. the vaccines could still work quite well against this variant. we'll know that over the next week or two. we h...

Today. starting on monday, the u.s. will restrict travel from eight nations in southern africa. that is where the variant was first reported. joining me now, representative brendan boyle, democrat from pennsylvania. he is also a member of the house ways and means and budget committees. lots to get to here. starting with this, sir, as i welcome you on this holiday weekend. your biggest concerns are what around this variant? and do you foresee the likelihood, even a possibility, of sending the u.s. back into varying stages of shutdown as a result of omicron? >> well, great to be with you on this...

Where this is going. i think it's still pretty early, though. >> okay, well, consider yourself booked because i'd love to know where you think this is going. with regard to what the w.h.o. was saying about, this preliminary evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection exists with this variant. so, doctor, would a natural variant evolve like this, or is this a sign of gain of function mutation? >> well, remember how well these variants arise. remember, the alpha variant, what we used to call the b.1.1.7 variant arose out of an unvaccinated population in southern england at the end of 2020...

The weekend and into this week, moderna, pfizer, et cetera, so that's why i say, by the end of the week, i think we're going to have a lot more information, and it also may depend on individuals who have gotten boosted. so for instance, if you have two doses and then six months later got a boost of the mrna vaccine, we've seen a 30 to 40-fold rise in virus-neutralizing antibody and even if it goes down, you have enough virus-neutralizing to potentially neutralize the omicron variant. that's possible. definitely two weeks from now, we can make many more informed decisions about the threat of om...