Omicron will 'find just about everybody' but vaccinated 'will still fare well', says Fauci

As the B.1.1.529 Omicron variant of concern spreads throughout the United States, the top infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday, Jan. 11 that the strain “will eventually find almost everyone with its extraordinary and unprecedented transmission efficiency.” Biden’s chief medical advisor told CNN that the Omicron is likely to infect everybody but the vaccinated population will “still fare better.”

"Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody," Dr. Anthony Fauci told J. Stephen Morrison, in his televised remarks.

He added that those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted “would get exposed,” adding that “maybe a lot of them, will get infected but will very likely.” 

Fauci, though, iterated that for those who are vaccinated, for them, there is reasonably well the sense of not ending up in the hospitals or having a risk of death from the COVID-19. Those who are not vaccinated are "going to get the brunt of the severe aspect of this," he stressed. As many as 65 million people remain unvaccinated against the COVID-19 across America, while over 62% of them have been fully vaccinated. Over 23% are fully vaccinated and boosted, as per the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Fauci responded to CNN’s query on Tuesday whether the pandemic has entered a new phase as the infections break the record and the country reported an estimated 1.35 million COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. "We may be on the threshold of that right now,” he said as the highly contagious Omicron variant spread like wildfire and showed no signs of abating. 

'Hard to process what's happening right now..' says FDA acting commissioner

"I think it's hard to process what's actually happening right now, which is: Most people are going to get COVID-19,” US Food and Drug Administration acting commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock told the network on Tuesday. She responded to whether the United States needed to change its COVID-19 strategy as it prioritises the essential services. “What we need to do is make sure the hospitals can still function, transportation, you know, other essential services are not disrupted while this happens,” she said expressing concerns about the disruptions awaiting the US due to the mounting caseload. 

In harrowing figures worse than what was witnessed in the first wave of the SARS-CoV-2 during January 2021, as many as 145,900 were in the hospitals with COVID-19 as of Tuesday. This figure rapidly doubled than what it was two weeks ago. COVID-19 cases averaged 754,200 over the past week, as per the Johns Hopkins University's data. This is apparently 4.5 times higher than the peak from the Delta-driven surge, and 33% higher than a week ago, as per Johns Hopkins University’s analysis. About 98.3% of all new coronavirus cases in the United States are driven by Omicron, the data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] revealed on Tuesday. 

The WHO Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had warned earlier that the new Covid-19 variant Omicron should not be categorized as “mild.” “While Omicron does appear to be less severe compared to Delta, especially for those vaccinated, it does not mean it should be categorised as mild” he stressed, adding that it is requiring hospitalisation and causes deaths.