Dr. Anthony Fauci is the Chief Medical advisor to the President.
A huge wave of omicron cases may peak in the US as soon as January, despite the fact that current vaccines can foil the variant.
The variant gained international attention in late November and scientists are still trying to understand it. The variant can largely circumvent protection from two vaccine doses, and it spreads stunningly fast. People who have received a third vaccine dose are protected against severe disease.
Anthony Fauci, a top infectious disease expert, reviewed the early laboratory and real-world data on vaccine effectiveness in a White House press briefing. A number of laboratory studies have shown that the levels of neutralizing antibodies from two doses of a vaccine are lower than they should be. Studies looking at neutralizing antibodies after a third dose show a significant increase in protection. A third dose of the vaccine increased the level of neutralizing antibodies against omicron.
Fauci presented data from the National Institutes of Health that showed that a third dose of the Moderna vaccine restored the immune system's ability to fight infections.
Fauci noted that the laboratory findings are showing up in real-world clinical data. The protection against infections from two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine fell from 70 percent to 33 percent. The data from the United Kingdom shows that getting a Pfizer-BioNTech booster dose increases vaccine effectiveness to 75 percent.
Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech have said they are working on a vaccine dose in case one is needed, but the findings have put a damper on the race.
Fauci said that the booster vaccine regimen worked against omicron. There is no need for a variant-specific booster at this point.
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Omicron has a wave.
That won't help the US avoid a wave of omicron cases. 17 percent of the US population is fully vaccined. The omicron is moving fast.
According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the variant has begun accounting for at least 3 percent of cases nationwide. It makes up 13 percent of cases in New York and New Jersey. Its share of cases is growing even though there is a huge surge in cases from the extremely transmissible delta variant.
Over the past 14 days, the US has seen a 22 percent increase in hospitalizations. The country's death toll has reached over one million.
The prevalence of omicron's in the US jumped seven-fold in one week, and the CDC estimates it has a doubling time of around two days. According to the Washington Post, federal health officials held a call with public health organizations on Tuesday in which they warned them to prepare for a huge wave of omicron cases in the coming weeks. A CDC model suggests that an omicron wave could hit health systems in January as they struggle to handle seasonal flu cases. It's not clear which is more likely.
The worst-case scenarios are similar to the CDC's first projection. The European Union expects omicron to be the most dominant strain by the middle of January. A senior health advisor for the United Kingdom warned government officials on Tuesday that new cases could reach 1 million per day by the end of the year.
