The United States is likely in for a hard winter as the Omicron variant of Covid-19 spreads rapidly, Dr. Anthony Fauci says, straining a health care system already battered by the Delta variant according to CNN.
“It’s going to take over,” Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said of the Omicron variant on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, urging Americans to get vaccinated and get their booster shots. “And be prudent in everything else you do: When you travel in your indoor settings that are congregated, wear a mask.”
“We can’t walk away from that Jake, we can’t,” he told CNN’s, Jake Tapper. “Because with Omicron, that we’re dealing with, it is going to be a tough few weeks to months as we get deeper into the winter.”
Ontario’s limit on indoor social gatherings to be cut from 25 people to 10, and outdoors from 100 to 25, with indoor capacity at restaurants and bars, halved according to a new report from the Toronto Star.
The report reveals that starting Tuesday, the province says indoor gatherings with vaccinated people will be limited to household members plus 10 others, according to CP. For gatherings involving unvaccinated people, the limit will be the household plus five.
Meanwhile, Israel’s health ministry Sunday recommended banning Israelis from traveling to the United States and added several European countries to its Covid “red list”, aimed at containing the Omicron variant’s spread.
According to France 24 News, Barring US travel for Israeli citizens and residents would mark a significant step for Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s government, given the hundreds of thousands of dual nationals and close ties between the countries.
Speaking before Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Bennett reiterated that he would continue to restrict travel in order to avoid further lockdowns. “We bought precious time for the State of Israel,” by curbing travel immediately after the new variant was detected last month in South Africa, the premier said.
Pfizer-BioNTech also recently announced on Friday that they will expand ongoing clinical trials of their COVID-19 vaccine in children to include a third dose for participants as young as 6 months old according to NPR Testing a third dose will cause a delay in submission of data to regulators to authorize use in the U.S.
In the fall, Pfizer’s CEO said the company expected to have data for this age group by the end of 2021. Now, the company says that they would expect to file results in the “first half of 2022” if trials are successful. The companies said two doses did not produce a robust immune response in kids 2 to 5 years old.
The companies, which produced the first vaccine against coronavirus infection authorized for use in the U.S., said they had made the decision “following a routine review by the external independent Data Monitoring Committee,” which acts as a watchdog over the clinical trials.
Meanwhile, in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) announced during a press conference on Thursday that she is planning to introduce legislation that includes a booster shot within the definition of being “fully vaccinated.”
TheHill reported that while the Democratic governor noted that the legislation needed to be more fleshed out and required more data to be collected, she signaled the change would happen eventually, saying that “at some point, we have to determine that fully vaccinated means boosted as well,” CNY Central reported.
Hochul’s remarks come as the country begins to see an uptick of COVID-19 cases again and as health officials grapple with the spread of the omicron variant, which President Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci warned on Thursday would likely be the dominant strain in “a few weeks.”
