With Covid-19 hospitalizations rising as the holiday season gets into full swing, experts are urging people to take precautions against Omicron
“What you have here right now is a potential perfect storm,” Osterholm said. “I’ve been very concerned about the fact that we could easily see a quarter or a third of our health care workers quickly becoming cases themselves.”
“For the health care workers, the hospitals, for people who are sick, even sick with things other than Covid, that represents a real danger and a real threat,” Slavitt told CNN’s Don Lemon on Thursday.
Long lines for Covid-19 testing were seen Thursday in metro areas such as New York, Boston and Miami.
Biden said Thursday that vaccinations and boosters are essential to keeping businesses and holiday gatherings safe.
“For the unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death,” he said. “But there’s good news if you’re vaccinated and you have your booster shot, you’re protected from severe illness and death.”
Vaccines still the best way to fight Covid-19, officials say
“In March 2020, we didn’t understand a lot about coronavirus. Second of all, we have vaccines now. We have the ability to change those vaccines. We’re getting oral therapeutics. We have much better tests and test availability. None of that’s perfect, but it’s much better than it was in March 2020,” Emanuel told CNN’s Michael Smerconish on Thursday.
Among people who got the treatment, the risk of hospitalization and death was 6.8%, compared with 9.7% among people who got a placebo, the study said. There was one death in the treatment group, compared with nine deaths in the placebo group.
“Given the increased risk related to the Delta and Omicron variant, it is important to increase uptake of primary vaccination and booster doses in all eligible populations,” said Heather Scobie, a member of the CDC’s Enhanced Surveillance Epidemiology Task Force Covid-19 Emergency Response.
People can travel safely with precautions, Fauci says
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he is certain Omicron will become the dominant variant relatively soon.
“It has what we call a doubling time of about three days. And if you do the math on that, if you have just a couple of percentage of the isolates being Omicron, very soon it’s going to be the dominant variant,” he told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“If you are vaccinated, and particularly if you are boosted, you’re going to have to wear a mask on the plane anyway. That’s a regulation. But be prudent and careful. When you go to the airport, particularly, that’s an indoor congregate setting,” Fauci told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
“I believe that if people follow the recommendations of the CDC about indoor masking, take the advice of getting vaccinated and getting boosted, we should be fine for the holidays, and we should enjoy it with our family and our friends.”
CNN’s Jen Christensen, Maggie Fox, Deidre McPhillips, Jacqueline Howard, Naomi Thomas, Virginia Langmaid, Allie Malloy, John Bonifield and Katherine Dillinger contributed to this report.
