“The only difficulty is that if you have so many cases, even if the rate of hospitalization is lower with Omicron than it is with Delta, there is still the danger that you will have a surging of hospitalizations that might stress the healthcare system,” Fauci said in an interview on Sunday with CNN.
Top US pandemic advisor Anthony Fauci on Sunday commented about the present surge of the epidemic in the United States, driven by Omicron. The US is experiencing almost a vertical increase in Covid cases but the peak has not yet come, Fauci said. The peak may be weeks away, he said in his interview to CNN
Here are 5 things that Fauci said:
1. “We are definitely in the middle of a very severe surge and an uptick in cases,” Fauci said. But the short-lived wave in South Africa offers some home that the surge will not last long.
2. Omicron is milder than previous variants, now there is mounting evidence, Fauci said. The US rates of death and hospitalisations have been far lower so far, Fauci observed.
3. However, there is still a danger of a surge in hospitalisation due to a large number of coronavirus cases. “There will certainly be a lot more cases because this is a much more transmissible virus than Delta is,” Fauci said.
4. For children, it’s not unsafe to get back to school, Fauci said. “I think all those things put together, it’s safe enough to get those kids back to school, balanced against the deleterious effects of keeping them out,” he added.
5. Because of the increase in cases, the system will be put under stress, he said. “When I say major disruption, you’re certainly going to see stresses on the system and the system being people with any kind of jobs … particularly with critical jobs to keep society functioning normally,” Fauci said. “We already know that there are reports from fire departments, from police departments in different cities that 10, 20, 25 and sometimes 30% of the people are ill. And that’s something that we need to be concerned about because we want to make sure that we don’t have such an impact on society that there really is a disruption. I hope that doesn’t happen.”
On the recent CDC isolation guideline, Fauci said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now considering including the negative test as part of its guidance after getting significant “pushback” on its updated recommendations last week.
Under that December. 27 guidance, isolation restrictions for people infected with COVID-19 were shortened from 10 days to five days if they are no longer feeling symptoms or running a fever. After that period, they are asked to spend the following five days wearing a mask when around others.
The guidelines have since received criticism from many health professionals for not specifying a negative antigen test as a requirement for leaving isolation.
“There has been some concern about why we don’t ask people at that five-day period to get tested,” Fauci said. “Looking at it again, there may be an option in that, that testing could be a part of that, and I think we’re going to be hearing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC.”
