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Monday, December 20, 2021
Today’s Paper
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Science|Fauci warns Omicron is ‘extraordinary’ and offers holiday guidance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/19/science/fauci-omicron.html
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THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

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Daily Covid Briefing


FAUCI WARNS OMICRON IS ‘EXTRAORDINARY’ AND OFFERS HOLIDAY GUIDANCE.


Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, warning of the
extraordinarily contagious Omicron variant.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York
Times

By Jan Hoffman

 * Dec. 19, 2021



Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, warned on
Sunday that the extraordinarily contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus
was raging worldwide and that it was likely to cause another major surge in the
United States, especially among the unvaccinated.

“This virus is extraordinary,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” referring
to the new variant.

But as Americans wrestle this week with whether to curtail holiday gatherings
and travel plans, Dr. Fauci said that adhering to the available preventive tools
should protect most.

“If you’re vaccinated and you’re boosted, and you take care when you go into
congregate settings like airports to make sure you continually wear your mask,
you should be OK,” Dr. Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He urged air
travelers to remain masked during flights.

Christmas 2021 need not be a replay of Christmas 2020, he said. He encouraged
even boosted people to get tested if they plan to attend celebrations indoors
and to try to avoid gatherings if they were unsure that whether all the guests
were vaccinated.



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“We are doing better if you look now compared to where we were a year ago,” Dr.
Fauci said on CNN. “We now have multiple at-home tests available, and we
virtually had none a year ago. But we do need to do better.”

While at-home tests are more widespread, they have been scarce in certain areas
that are struggling to keep up with demand.

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Still, with 50 million eligible Americans unvaccinated against Covid, the coming
six to eight weeks of winter seem poised to bring an uptick in cases, deaths,
overwhelmed hospitals and commensurately exhausted health care workers,
particularly in regions where vaccination rates are low, he said.

He made a fervent plea for people who had received two doses of a Covid vaccine
to get a booster as soon as they are eligible, which would substantially
strengthen their resistance to the Omicron variant.

He also said that breakthrough infections among the vaccinated would continue to
occur.

Dr. Francis Collins, who was in his final day as director of the National
Institutes of Health, expressed exasperation with those who claim that
breakthrough infections indicate that the vaccines don’t work.



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Vaccines are not perfect, he said on Fox News Sunday. But if people get Covid
after being vaccinated, he said: “The chances are you’re going to have a pretty
mild case. You’ll have the sniffles, maybe are sick for a day or two with a
fever, but you won’t be in the I.C.U. The vaccinations are really good at
protecting against severe disease.”







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