Sun 26 December 2021:
According to Anthony Fauci, the chief US epidemiologist, a surge of infections released by the Omicron coronavirus variant could outweigh the benefits of a decrease in its severity, finally overwhelming hospitals.
“Every day it goes up and up. The last weekly average was about 150,000 and it likely will go much higher,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“Even though we’re pleased by the evidence from multiple countries that it looks like there is a lesser degree of severity, we’ve got to be careful that we don’t get complacent about that. It might still lead to a lot of hospitalizations in the United States,” he told ABC news.
“If you have many, many, many more people with a less level of severity, that might kind of neutralize the positive effect of having less severity when you have so many more people,” Fauci said. “And we’re particularly worried about those who are in that unvaccinated class. Those are the most vulnerable ones when you have a virus that is extraordinarily effective in getting to people and infecting them the way omicron is.”
According to Fauci, evidence from the United Kingdom suggests that the highly mutated strain, while more contagious than Delta, causes fewer hospitalizations and shorter hospital stays. Last week, the United States reported an average of 150,000 daily cases, with the number likely to rise significantly, according to President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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