Dr. Anthony Fauci has urged Americans to disinvite unvaccinated people from Christmas gatherings
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top US expert on infectious disease, has urged Americans to disinvite unvaccinated people from Christmas gatherings as the fast-spreading COVID-19 Omicron variant fuels a surge in infections nationwide.
‘We’re dealing with a serious enough situation now that if there’s an unvaccinated person, I would say, ‘I’m very sorry, but not this time. Maybe another time when this is all over,” said Fauci in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday night.
The warning comes as Omicron now accounts for 73 percent of new cases in the US and pushes Europe to the brink of fresh lockdowns, with Wales the latest to announce harsh new restrictions set to kick in on Boxing Day, a British holiday celebrated the day after Christmas.
New York, Georgia and Texas are all seeing major surges in new COVID cases, which are up more than 100 percent in the past two weeks in those states.
Hawaii now leads the nation with daily new cases up 557 percent in the past two weeks followed by Florida at 371 percent.
The nation is currently averaging 148,384 new cases daily over the past week, a 23 percent increase from two weeks ago. Confirmed Omicron cases increased by 19 percent day-over-day, up to 1,781 as of Wednesday morning from 1,485 on Tuesday, but that number represents only the tiny fraction of infections that are DNA sequenced.
Deaths have stabilized, with America averaging around 1,300 deaths per day – a steady figure for the past week and down slightly from two weeks ago. Encouraging new data from a leaked British study suggests that Omicron infections are less severe than prior variants.
On Tuesday, the US recorded 172,072 new cases – down from 253,954 on Monday – and 2093 deaths in a single day. The US recorded 1,513 deaths the day earlier. Since the start of the pandemic, the US has recorded 51.2 million COVID-19 cases and 810,045 deaths.
Despite the rising number of cases, particularly in New York where cases overall have risen 102% in the state over the past two weeks, the president of one of New York’s largest hospital systems has said that the Omicron surge is not straining his facilities.
‘We’re doing very, very well, very manageable. There’s no crisis,’ Michael Dowling, the CEO of Northwell Health, told CNN‘s John Berman on Tuesday.
He noted that there are now 460 patients in its 23 hospitals, which is less than 10 percent of its overall capacity. But at the same time last year, during COVID’s second wave, the hospital system saw nearly 1,000 cases. And during the first wave, it had 3,500 patients suffering severe side effects from the virus.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday that the city’s hospitalization rate stood at 2.21 per 100,000, well below the level of prior waves.
Meanwhile, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky appeared to contradict President Joe Biden by insisting that the current surge in cases was expected, after Biden said on Tuesday that ‘the Omicron virus spread even more rapidly than anybody thought.’
‘We expected this, because we have seen the doubling times of this virus in other countries have been really rapid and that’s what we’re seeing here in the United States,’ Walensky insisted in an interview with the Today Show on Wednesday.
Pressed on criticism that the Biden administration failed to secure enough at-home test kits as Americans struggle to find them, Walensky insisted that resources were being devoted to surge testing capacity.
‘This has come on quickly. We’ve learned about Omicron just prior to Thanksgiving. The administration is doing a lot with regard to testing and we recognize we have more work to do,’ she said.
In the US outbreaks have forced a wave of disruptions, with holiday parties cancelled, the NHL suspending games through Christmas and withdrawing from the Winter Olympics, and Fox cancelling its New Year’s Eve telecast from Times Square.
Nevertheless many Americans are forging ahead with Christmas plans. Since Thursday, more than 12.5 million Americans have traveled by airplane, more than double last year’s figure for the same period and approaching pre-pandemic levels, according to TSA screening data.
Earlier, Fauci also said that the US is considering shortening the 10-day isolation window for fully-vaccinated people infected with COVID-19.
Reducing the timeframe is ‘being discussed,’ particularly in the context of healthcare workers, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday, hours after England reduced its quarantine from 10 days to seven.
‘If you get a healthcare worker who’s infected and without any symptoms at all, you don’t want to keep that person out of work too very long, particularly if you get a run on hospital beds and the need for healthcare personal,’ Fauci told CNN‘s New Day.
Walensky told CBS Mornings that there will be an update ‘soon’. ‘We’re actively examining those data now and doing some modeling analyses to asses that,’ she said.
The Omicron variant (purple) is now the dominant Covid strain in the U.S., making up 73% of cases last week. It overtakes the Delta variant (orange) which had been dominant since July
Six year-old Brielle Peare uses a microphone to talk to Santa Claus, who sits sealed inside a store display window behind glass as virus prevention measure at the Primark store in Boston, Massachusetts on Saturday
Dr. Anthony Fauci recommends telling unvaccinated family members not to come over for the holidays due to COVID spikes:
¿I would say, ¿I¿m very sorry, but not this time. Maybe another time when this is all over.¿¿ pic.twitter.com/pyaCIR9jbH
— The Recount (@therecount) December 22, 2021
In a spot of good news, more signs continue to emerge that Omicron appears to cause less severe illness than prior variants, with a South African study has suggesting the risk of hospitalization is 80 percent lower with the variant.
And British scientists gave a glimmer of hope in a leaked study showing Omicron is milder than the Delta variant.
The UK Health Security Agency say most people are likely to have a mild illness with less serious symptoms which is in part due to the large numbers of vaccinated and previously infected people – but also possibly because Omicron is milder.
The scientists also endorsed previous findings that booster jabs offer significant protection from developing symptoms and ending up in hospital, according to Politico.
The tentative findings by Britain’s equivalent of the CDC are due to be published before Christmas and do not mean that the the threat of the variant can be ignored, as it is so transmissible that large numbers are set to end up in hospital.
Although COVID hospitalizations have increased rapidly in New York City, rising more than 100 percent in the past month, one hospital executive insists that capacity is not under strain.
‘We’re doing very, very well. Very manageable. There’s no crisis… on the hospital side right now, we are doing quite well. It is very manageable indeed,’ said Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell Health which serves New York City, Long Island and Westchester County in an interview with CNN
Dowling said that the current surge could help the nation achieve herd immunity without mass fatalities.
‘We are in the middle of a pandemic… you’re going to have surges… if people are not that sick and they are not in the hospital — you’re building up herd immunity. So from that point of view its not the worst thing in the world,’ he said.
Biden is still awaiting his results Wednesday after taking another COVID PRC test after being exposed to an aide who later tested positive for the coronavirus after traveling on Air Force One Friday.
‘I haven’t gotten the result yet,’ Biden told reporters Wednesday morning as they exited the South Court Auditorium after he gave an update on supply chain issues. He coughed throughout the event.
Since the exposure, the president tested negative Sunday using an antigen test and received a negative result with a PCR test Monday morning.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that fully vaccinated people get tested between five and seven days after being exposed to a COVID-positive person. Wednesday will mark day number five for Biden.
Omicron variant is now the main coronavirus strain in the United States, accounting for 73.2 percent of new cases over the past week for which data is available, health authorities reported Monday.
In New York and New Jersey , the Midwest, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, and the Northwest, the Omicron variant now account for more than 90 percent of new cases.
¿There are going to be breakthrough cases of omicron ¿ but they will be certainly milder if you¿re vaccinated and boosted.¿ @CDCDirector Rochelle Walensky speaks about the fight against the current omicron surge and testing shortages. pic.twitter.com/9DqbjqDyQX
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) December 22, 2021
Travelers wait in line to check in for flights at Logan Airport on Tuesday in Boston. Public health officials are urging caution as the new Omicron variant might become the dominant strain in the U.S. during the holiday break
While other regions currently have lower Omicron prevalence, the variant is spreading fast enough that officials expect it will be dominant throughout the country within weeks.
America also reported its first confirmed death from the variant on Monday night, when an unvaccinated Texas man between ages 50 and 60 succumbed to the variant.
Former head of the Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb warned on Wednesday that the White House ‘s new plan to make coronavirus tests more widely available to mitigate a new virus wave may have come too little too late.
‘Look, we should have been doing this all along,’ the ex-FDA commissioner said on CNBC.
‘We should’ve been trying to get more at-home tests available and giving them away to consumers and in drug stores, you know, allowing consumers to come into a drug store, buy maybe four tests for $5, some small price and limiting the number of sales they can get, but making sure they got into the hands of consumers. That’s what other countries are doing.’
Yet Walensky insisted on Wednesday that ‘there really is no need to panic’ as she defended Biden’s response.
‘There are going to be breakthrough cases of Omicron … but they will be certainly milder if you’re vaccinated and boosted,’ she said.
The CDC director said the federal government would spend $3 billion on rapid home-testing kits that will be delivered in January.
Overall, cases of the variant have been relatively mild compared to Delta and other strains. It is a promising sign, but Fauci warns that the quick transmission of the virus could negate any positive effects of a less severe strain.
‘The idea that it can spread so rapidly, even if in fact it is less severe, and it appears at least from the South African data that there is less of a ratio of hospitalization to cases and duration of stay in the hospital, so it very well may be less severe. We’re hoping that that’s the case, and we’re hoping that as this evolves here in the United States that that will be our experience,’ he said.
‘Even if it is, quantity of infections, given the extraordinary efficiency of spread might actually obviate that diminution of severity to the point that you still get significant disease so we can not take this lightly at all.’
Overall cases in the U.S., which we now know are mostly of the newly discovered strain, have shot upwards as well. Johns Hopkins University report 253,954 new cases on Monday. It is the highest total since September 7 – the peak of the Delta wave – and only the third time since January the 250,000 daily case mark was eclipsed.
The nation is currently averaging 148,384 new cases daily over the past week, with that number likely to increase if Monday’s high case total becomes normal. New cases are up more than 20 percent over the past two weeks.
Deaths have stabilized, with America averaging around 1,300 deaths per day – a steady figure for the past two weeks.
Hospitalizations have increased though, with 69,224 Americans receiving inpatient treatment for severe infection every day – a 5 percent increase over two weeks ago.
Confirmed Omicron cases increased by 19 percent day-over-day as well, up to 1,781 as of Tuesday morning, up from 1,485 on Tuesday. These figures are highly undercounting the total level of cases in the U.S., though, as it likely makes up hundreds of thousands – potentially millions – of cases at this point.
While things are trending in the wrong direction in the U.S, the situation in the UK is starting to stabilize. The nation was among the first to experience a massive surge in cases caused by the variant, with London in particular erupting as a global hotspot. Daily infections have remained relatively flat since last week, a promising sign that the variant is already burning out.
Very few visitors are seen Tuesday in Times Square during the Christmas season because of COVID, Manhattan
Still, some British health experts are fearing the worst, believing that new daily cases will jump from 91,743 a day to around 460,000 a day by the end of the year. Some, like original lockdown architect Neil Ferguson, are even calling for lockdowns in some areas to curb the spread of the virus.
On Wednesday, the Welsh First Minister announced new restrictions including curbs on large gatherings, two meter social distancing in most public settings and restrictions on restaurants.
The Welsh Government is not imposing rules on mixing in private homes, but has issued tougher guidance which ‘strongly’ advises people to limit household mixing.
The situation in America is erupting right as the holiday season hits fully swing. Christmas is Saturday, and this week, millions of people will travel around the country and attend large gatherings with family and friends.
Fauci believes that holiday travel and festivities is still safe as long as a person is fully vaccinated, boosted, and takes other precautions to protect themselves from the virus.
‘If you are vaccinated and particularly boosted, and you are going to be involved in an indoor home setting with family, relatives, who are also vaccinated and boosted, you could feel comfortable in doing that social interaction,’ he said.