Fauci: Expect ’cron COVID cases to ‘go much higher’
Brace for COVID-19 cases to keep spiking across the U.S., the nation’s top infectious disease expert said Sunday.
Early studies suggest the highly infectious omicron variant, now the dominant virus strain, is less harmful than previous variants but could still wreak havoc if a huge number of people contract it, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief White House medical adviser.
“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,” he told ABC’s “This Week.”
“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,” he added.
COVID case numbers have reached their highest levels since the summer. The U.S. had a seven-day average of 188,316 new cases as of Thursday, more than double the level at the start of the month, according to the tracking site USAFacts.org.
Fauci, who also is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted more infections to come.
“Every day it goes up and up … and it likely will go much higher,” he said.
The surge comes amid the peak of winter holiday travel — and was behind the cancellation of hundreds of flights Sunday. Holiday spending was another matter. Consumers bought gifts at the fastest pace in 17 years, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse. Clothes, with jewelry especially in demand from Nov. 1 through Christmas Eve.
Shoppers are “learning to live” with the challenges of the pandemic, said Steve Sadove, senior adviser to Mastercard and former CEO of Saks Inc.
“You’re coming out of 2021 with quite a bit of consumer momentum,” he said.
The full impact of omicron heading into 2022 remains to be seen. Recent studies out of the U.K. found people infected with the strain are less likely to be hospitalized.
But New York officials have noticed a “striking increase” in hospital admissions of children with COVID.
On Christmas Eve, the state sent an advisory to pediatricians noting COVID hospitalizations for kids 18 and under increased fourfold between Dec. 5 and last week. The state did not share how sick the affected children were, NBC New York reported.
But as the pandemic puts a damper on the holiday season, there’s still reason for hope, the nation’s surgeon general said.
Despite some criticism that authorities focused on vaccination to the neglect of COVID testing in recent months, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy emphasized the jabs have saved lives.
“We’ve lost so many people and our lives have been changed fundamentally,” Murthy told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“But those struggles shouldn’t obscure one critical thing, which is that we have made tremendous progress in this last two years, as well. We have saved more than a million lives because of vaccination efforts this past year alone,” he said, adding: “I know it may not always feel like the progress is enough.”
Murthy also shared some advice for parents.
“There is a terrible stigma around mental health that surrounds our children and older adults as well,” he said. “One of the most powerful things that parents can do is to start a conversation with their children about mental health, to let them know it’s OK if you struggle.”