The omicron Covid-19 variant has now been found in 50 countries and 19 states, according to the CDC Director.
Walensky said that all of the same measures will at least provide some protection against omicron.
Over the last week, roughly 12 million shots have been administered, with 7 million of them being booster shots, according to Jeff Zients, who is leading the White House's Covid response efforts.
He said that the weekly total number of shots was the highest since May. We haven't seen many people get the vaccine since the spring.
Anthony Fauci said scientists should have some data by the middle of next week that will show how well the vaccines stand up to the new variant.
Fauci said that they would be able to determine whether or not the effectiveness of the vaccine is affected by live virus or pseudo virus. We are doing animal studies to evaluate immune protection as well as efficacy of antivirals.
He said that evidence in epidemiology and clinical studies will show how transmissible and severe the virus is and whether or not it can evade vaccines.
Fauci pointed to a chart that showed a seven-day rolling average of confirmed omicron cases per 1 million people in South Africa. He said that the almost vertical inflection of this clearly argues towards a high degree of transmissibility.
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