Washington, December 5 (UAE): US health officials said, on Sunday, that while the Omicron type of coronavirus is spreading rapidly across the country, initial indications are that it may be less dangerous than Delta, which continues to increase the number of hospitalized cases.
President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told CNN’s State of the Union that scientists need more information before drawing conclusions about the danger of Omicron, according to the Associated Press.
“So far, there doesn’t seem to be a significant degree of risk,” Fauci said. “But we really have to be careful before we make any decision that it’s less dangerous or that it doesn’t cause any serious disease, comparable to Delta disease.”
Fauci said the Biden administration is considering lifting travel restrictions on non-citizens entering the United States from several African countries.
It was imposed with a variable omicron explosion in the region, but UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticized measures such as “travel apartheid”.
“We hope we can lift this ban in a very reasonable amount of time,” Fauci said. “We all feel very badly about the hardships that have been placed not only on South Africa but on other African countries.”
Omicron had been detected in about a third of US states by Sunday, including in the Northeast, South, Great Plains, and West Coast. Wisconsin and Missouri were among the most recent states to confirm cases.
But deltas remain the dominant alternative, making up more than 99% of cases and leading to an increase in hospitalizations in the north. National Guard teams have been dispatched to aid overwhelmed hospitals in western New York, and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has issued an emergency order requiring any hospitals facing limited patient capacity to reduce non-urgent scheduled procedures.
Even if Omicron proves to be less dangerous than Delta, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the World Health Organization, told CBS “Face The Nation,” it remains a problem.
“Even if we have a large number of mild cases, some of these individuals will need to be hospitalized,” she said. “They will need to go to the ICU and some people will die. … We don’t want to see that happen as well as an already difficult situation with Delta trading globally.”
Two years after the outbreak, COVID-19 has killed more than 780,000 Americans, and the death toll is about 860 per day.
More than 6,600 new hospital admissions are reported daily, according to tracking data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States have nearly halved since the Delta peak in August and September, but with more than 86,000 new infections daily, the numbers remain high, especially as the holidays approach, when people travel and gather with family.
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