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 The United States faces a second Christmas of upended holiday plans,
with a surge in infections fueled by the now-dominant Omicron
variant of the coronavirus forcing many to cancel travel, reconsider
visiting loved ones, and question attending holiday parties.
"There are many of these parties that have 30, 40, 50 people in
which you do not know the vaccination status of individuals. Those
are the kind of functions in the context of Omicron that you do not
want to go to," Fauci said at a White House briefing.
Early evidence indicates Omicron is less severe than the Delta
variant, said Fauci, citing studies from South Africa and Scotland,
but warned Americans must remain cautious.
"This is good news. However, we must wait to see what happens in our
own population which has its own demographic considerations," he
said.
The seven-day average of COVID-19 cases in the United States rose
25% from the previous week to about 149,300 cases per day, said U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle
Walensky, with average daily deaths up 3.5% at 1,200.
Omicron represents approximately 73% of cases across the country,
said Walensky, and as high as 90% of cases in some areas, such as
the eastern Atlantic states, parts of the Midwest, South, and
northern Pacific states.
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 "This increase in Omicron
proportion is what we anticipated and what we
have been preparing for," she said.
The U.S. government will have 265,000 treatment
courses of Pfizer Inc's COVID-19 anti-viral
treatment available by January and 10 million by
late summer, said White House COVID-19 response
coordinator Jeff Zients.
The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday
authorized Paxlovid, Pfizer's pill for at-risk
people aged 12 and above.
The government will provide any resources Pfizer
needs for production and will distribute
treatments to states and localities at no charge
as soon as they are delivered, he said.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein and Katharine
Jackson; Additional reporting by Caitlin Webber
in Washington and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru;
Editing by Leslie Adler and Alistair Bekk)
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