WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is urging Americans to get vaccinated including booster shots as he seeks to quell concerns Monday over the new COVID-19 variant omicron, but he won’t immediately push for more restrictions to stop its spread.
During remarks from the White House, the president said the omicron variant is a “cause for concern” but not cause for panic.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and Biden’s leading COVID-19 adviser, said Monday that there were as yet still no cases of the variant identified in the U.S. but that it was “inevitable” that it would make its way into the country.
Speaking on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Fauci said scientists hope to know in the next week or two how well the existing COVID-19 vaccines protect against the variant, and how dangerous it is compared to earlier strains.
“We really don’t know,” Fauci said, calling speculation “premature.”
The new variant poses the latest test to Biden’s efforts to contain the pandemic, mitigate its impacts on the economy and return a sense of normalcy to the U.S. during the holiday season.
Biden spoke Monday about the urgency of getting vaccinated against COVID-19 to protect against variants, especially as roughly 80 million Americans aged 5 and up haven’t yet received any shots. But Biden said he would not announce any new virus-related restrictions, beyond last week’s move to restrict travel from South Africa and seven other countries in the region, effective Monday.
