Name: Expert says there's no need to panic regarding new coronavirus variants.
Uploaded: 2021-01-23T00:13:28-0500
Duration: 154622
Description: The two new coronavirus variants have many in the public asking questions.

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The two new coronavirus variants have many in the public asking questions.

ALSO GIVING OUR HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS A LITTLE BREATHING ROOM. >>> AS NEW VARIANTS OF THE VIRUS EMERGE, WILL THEY COMPROMISE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE VACCINES? WE SPOKE TO A DOCTOR WHO JUST WRAPPED UP NEW RESEARCH. JOINING US LIVE WITH HIS TAKE ON HOW CONCERNED WE SHOULD BE ABOUT THE VARIANTS. KIRSTEN? >> Reporter: GERALD, ACCORDING TO THE LATEST CDC MAP, MORE THAN 20 STATES ACROSS OUR COUNTRY HAVE CONFIRMED CASES CAUSED BY A VARIANT. AS OF TONIGHT 144 TOTAL CASES. NOW THE EXPERT I TALKED TO TONIGHT SAID THE MORE WE GET PEOPLE VACCINATED THE LESS LIKELY IT IS FOR VARIANTS LIKE THIS TO SPREAD. DUKE UNIVERSITY DR. DAVID'S LAB IS THE ONLY ONE IN THE STATE TO STUDY BOTH THE U.K. AND SOUTH AFRICAN VARIANTS. HIS LAB JUST WRAPPED UP ONE OF MANY STUDIES THIS WEEK. >> WE DON'T NEED TO PANIC. IT IS NOT UNEXPECTED. >> Reporter: BOTH VARIANTS APPEAR TO BE MORE CONTAGIOUS, BUT NOT DEADLIER. >> AT THE U.K. VARIANT, IT'S ABOUT TWO TO THREE TIMES LESS SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE ANTIBODIES THE VACCINES ARE PRODUCING. THE SOUTH AFRICAN VARIANT IS ABOUT FIVE TO SIX TIMES LESS SUSCEPTIBLE TO THOSE ANTIBODIES. ALTHOUGH BOTH VARIANTS APPEAR TO BE LESS SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE ANTIBODIES. HE AND OTHER EXPERTS ARE CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC THE VACCINES WILL WORK AGAINST THE VARIANTS. >> THE VACCINES INDUCE A VERY HIGH LEVEL OF IMMUNITY. EVEN IF THAT IS CUT IN HALF, THAT IS STILL ENOUGH TO PREVENT YOU FROM GETTING SICK. >> Reporter: EXPERTS DON'T BELIEVE THE SOUTH AFRICAN STRAIN HAS MADE IT TO THE U.S. YET. THE U.K. VARIANT HAS BEEN IN THE COUNTRY FOR A WHILE NOW. THE QUESTION REMAINS IS IT IN OUR STATE? >> YOU MIGHT HAVE SEEN REPORTS THAT THE B117, THE BRITISH VARIANT HAS BEEN ALREADY DETECTED IN NORTH CAROLINA. WE HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET, BUT IT MIGHT CHANGE TOMORROW FOR ALL I KNOW. >> Reporter: HE TELLS US HE DOESN'T EXPECT THE VARIANT TO BECOME A PROBLEM HERE IN THE U.S. ANY TIME SOON, BUT URGES THE IMPORTANCE OF GETTING VACCINATED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE TO HELP SLOW THE SPREAD. >> THE MORE PEOPLE THAT GET VACCINATED, THE FEWER TRANSMISSION EVENTS WE WILL HAVE, AND WILL SLOW DOWN THE SPREAD OF ANY VARIANT. >> Reporter: NOW HE TELLS US WHILE HE BELIEVES THE VACCINES WILL WORK AGAINST THE VARIANT, ONLY TIME WILL REALLY TELL. HE TELLS US WORST-CASE SCENARIO THEY CAN TWEAK THOSE VACCINES TO ACCOMMODATE THE VARIANTS IF

Luke Notestine

Kirsten Gutiérrez

Kevin Kuzminski

Expert says there's no need to panic regarding new coronavirus variants.

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I'm meteorologist, Amy Wilmoth in the WRL severe weather center tracking a cold front that will move through the state throughout the day. Today, we'll have some light rain with this perhaps moderate rain at times, but most of you won't get a ton of rain. It's just going to be some light passing showers at four o'clock this afternoon, we'll still have some rain showing up on the radar scattered showers possible. Uh, basically anywhere aside from our northern counties, our northern counties should be dry at that point by 5 p.m. or so. The rain is south of the triangle impacting our southern counties during the evening. Commute, still some showers around in our southern counties at 7 p.m. But beyond that, the rain will start to move out and it will be dry overnight tonight. And we're back to sunshine as we head into tomorrow. Look at how much rain we could get. It's less than 1/10 of an inch of rain. So we're not going to get much out of this system, but at least it's something, it's our only rain chance in the next seven days. So we'll have some light rain moving through thanks to the cold front, temperatures will likely get into the low eighties in our southern counties where we'll have sunshine a little bit longer. 74 for the high in Raleigh and Durham, 75 in Roxboro, 73 for the high temperature in South Hill, Virginia. So temperatures running pretty close to normal throughout the day today. Good news. If you're headed to the Bulls game this evening at 635 it looks like the rain will be out of here. We have a 20% chance for rain, but the best chance will be in the southern part of the viewing area, 70 degrees, the expected temperature at 6 p.m. 68 by seven and in the mid six by 8 p.m. So maybe take the jacket or the sweater with you as temperatures fall into the sixties starting around seven o'clock or so. So we have passing showers today. Generally light rain a little breezy at times with the high of 74 tonight, we'll have mostly clear skies. We'll get down to 51 beautiful weather. Thursday, partly cloudy to mostly sunny with a high of 72. Pretty much the same thing on Friday. Temperatures will be in the low seventies for highs. We're up to 76 Saturday and then low eighties by Sunday, mid to upper eighties for high temperatures in the forecast for Monday and Tuesday of next week.

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Brian Shrader flies over the site of a plane crash at Raleigh-Durham International Airport approximately three hours after the accident.

Seen some activity just in the past 10 minutes or so. I want to take you outside Sky five right now for a live look at the scene. We saw a van being escorted to the runway there and someone got out and now there appears to be a really careful inspection of the debris going on. So we're working to confirm if that may be the NTSB investigation team arriving at the scene. Let's zoom out and give you some about where this is. There are two main runways at RDU International and this is in the grassy field next to the runway that mostly serves terminal one on the east side of the airport, that runway remains closed while this investigation continues at the top of your screen. That is the other main runway that serves terminal two, mostly that runway is open. So we have two things going on here that could affect your flights for the rest of the day and maybe even into tomorrow, the airport takeoff and landing capacity is roughly reduced by half because they are only working with one runway. And if you have a flight coming out of terminal one, maybe Southwest, you're going to have to take that crossover all the way out to that other runway. It's going to add a lot of extra time.

Sky 5 flies over RDU plane crash 3 hours later 

A UNC Health physician and pilot were taken to the hospital Wednesday after a small plane crashed at Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU).


Sky 5 flies over plane crash at RDU

RDU Airport Authority gives an update on a plane crash that sent a physician and pilot to the hospital. The crash occurred Wednesday morning on a flight that took off from Wilmington.

<p>Landguth first, I want to extend my thoughts to those affected by this morning's aircraft accident and thank our first responders for their quick action to respond. The airport authority and its mutual aid partners responded to an aircraft accident at RDU involving a general aviation aircraft. The accident occurred at approximately 10:10 a.m. in the grass next to runway five, right 23 left. The flight was arriving from Wilmington, North Carolina. The A the aircraft is owned by medical Air Inc and operated by UN C air operations. The aircraft had two people on board, one pilot and one passenger. Both were transported to area hospitals. The federal A Bush administration issued a ground stop that was lifted at approximately 1130 this morning. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have both been notified. The National Transportation Safety Board is en route and expected to arrive within the next hour at which time we will conduct an accident investigation. Rdu's runway five left 23 right reopened to departing and arriving aircraft around 11:30 a.m. this morning. Are you experiencing approximately 70 delays and several arriving flights were diverted to other airports? Until ground stock was lifted, travelers should contact their airline for the latest updates regarding the flight status. And of course questions about the identity and condition of the pilot and passenger should be directed to UN C health. And at this time I'll try to answer any questions. You may have, uh, the one, any other accidents in, in the past. I'm not familiar with any other accidents have occurred with that operation. I don't know, uh, that's the role of the National Transportation Safety Board. They'll actually come in and do the investigation. Uh, and at some point in the future, they write up a report and determine what the cause of the accident was. You know, that there was no notification to the airport authority or to the FAA uh about any type of emergency on board. Do we have a guy? We don't, all we know that we've got them out of the airplane and we've got them transported to local hospitals. We know situations like this and delays have a ripple effect on, you know, flights. Do you have any idea what type of impact we'll see here in our view and for not sure, but what we're going to encourage everybody to do is reach out to your airlines. We'll be able to give you real time information about the impact of your particular flight. Ok. I believe some of them went to Greensboro and I think a couple went to Charlotte as well. What, what to be impacted due to the NTSD. Say that one more time at this point in time, what we call the west side of our airport is now open the investigation they'll conduct will all be on the east side. So at this point, we are anticipating normal operations returning to normal operations from this point forward. I don't think that anything that they're doing regarding the investigation or where they would have to investigate would have any impact to the west side of the airport. No, the aircraft is still on the airfield itself. It's on the east side of the field. So terminal one that runways the east side of the field, that's where the debris field actually sits, the west side of the field is open and operational and safe to operate. Not that I'm aware of in operations for you throughout this event today. What was your main concern concerning the passengers that were in the internals? Right. I think our primary focus when, when that accident occurred were the two people sitting in that aircraft? Our primary mission is to make sure we can get to them and try to rescue them and try to make sure that we can get them in a safe condition as fast as we possibly can. Uh secondarily is trying to figure out then how we recover and get our operations back up and running. Mhm. How does that affect? What goes on term? Yeah, so great. Question. So the team has figured out a way to get all the aircraft they're gonna operate at terminal one. Your Southwest develops. Uh We've got a crossover taxi way that we can actually get them through our general aviation aircraft. We've got a crossover taxiway, we can get them to. But the rest of the uh accident scene is actually kind of isolated and closed and locked off. Yeah, you're terminal one at this point in time. Once they can get back on their schedule, it's going to be a normal operations. All right. Thank you guys. All right. Thank you. Grab your phone, right.</p>

News conference: RDU plane crash sent 2 to hospital

A small plane crashed at Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) Wednesday morning.



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Expert says there's no need to panic regarding new coronavirus variants.

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