(OPINION) A new report from US News is revealing that the nation’s leading infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci OK’d small, at-home New Year’s Eve gatherings among vaccinated and boosted individuals on Wednesday, but he urged Americans to cancel plans to attend larger parties as conditions become more grim amid the omicron variant.
“If your plans are to go to a 4 0- to 50-person New Year’s Eve party with all the bells and whistles and everybody hugging and kissing and wishing each other a happy new year, I would strongly recommend that this year we do not do that,” Fauci said during the White House COVID-19 briefing Wednesday.
His comments come as cities scale back their New Year’s Eve festivities. According to CNBC News, New York City has imposed a capacity limit of 15,000 people on its annual celebration at Times Square. The event normally draws 58,000 people. All attendees are required to provide proof of vaccination.
Los Angeles has canceled plans for a live audience at its New Year’s Eve celebration, choosing to stream it instead. London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo and other cities around the world have also called off events. Fauci said it is now “incontrovertibly” clear that omicron is highly transmissible.
Covid infections nationwide have reached a pandemic high, a seven-day average of more than 265,000 new cases per day, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The previous high mark was 252,000 average daily cases on Jan. 11, 2021, before vaccines were broadly distributed.
