Tony's Diary Package — page 713

New Daily Confirmed COVID-19 Cases in the U.S. a ah1 aor Alir Thr eye Tet pie azz Tat byt ile TRIE pert EVt att CUT Oz/ET BLAEE BELT TEsLT ST/IT tt TAT GEAOL TT AST BACT ene 2020/2021 • Did a zoom podcast interview with Quinn Bradlee (son of Sally Quinn and the late Ben Bradlee). He is disabled and Sally asked me to do this. I could not refuse since I admired Ben so much and he was always so gracious and kind to Chris and me. He was so excited to have the opportunity to interview me. Important Issue: Francis Collins forwarded an email to me (see below )which triggered a concern about whether the Indian variant - B.1.617 was resistant two antibodies induced by vaccines. I forwarded this email to the medical team including Jeff Zients and Rochelle Walensky. Rochelle called me up and mentioned that her colleagues in Boston including those at the Broad Institute as well as Dan Barouch were finding that the Indian variant could be very problematic with regard to its resistance to vaccine induced antibodies. In addition, I spoke with Bob Seder and the work that he has been doing with monkeys also indicates that B.1.617 could be very problematic. Then, Jeff Zients called me up together with Natalie Quillian and feels that we should call a temporary halt on travel from India until we sought this out and based on the information that I sent him. This is a critical decision since if we don't block travel from India and things look bad later on we will be sharply criticized for not doing so. However , if we do block travel, there will be those who criticize us for doing so. This is very similar to the deliberations that we had during the Trump administration regarding China, the Eu and the UK. SEE E-MAILS BELOW starting with the e-mail that I sent to the medical team of Walensky, Vivek, Bechara, Slavitt, Zients, Nunez-Smith. (Rochelle subsequently forwarded it to Dawn O'Connell at HHS) Team: