As the heavily mutated Omicron variant continues to tear across the United States faster than any previous strain of the coronavirus, President Biden outlined new measures Tuesday to attempt to minimize its toll by expanding government testing sites, distributing a half-billion free at-home tests and deploying more federal health resources to overburdened hospitals.
“We should all be concerned about Omicron, but not panicked,” Biden said in an afternoon address delivered from the White House.
Biden said that vaccinated Americans should feel comfortable celebrating Christmas and the holidays as planned.
“I know some Americans are wondering if you can safely celebrate the holiday with family and friends,” he continued.
“The answer is, ‘Yes you can,’ if you and those you celebrate with are vaccinated.”
But the president also issued a stark warning to those who remain unvaccinated.
“If you’re not fully vaccinated, you have good reason to be concerned,” Biden said.
“You’re at a high risk of getting sick, and if you get sick, you’re likely to spread it to others, including friends and family. And the unvaccinated have a significantly higher risk of ending up in the hospital—or even dying.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 61 percent of the U.S. population is currently considered fully vaccinated — leaving nearly 40 percent of the country unvaccinated.
Biden urged vaccine holdouts to get inoculated, calling it their “patriotic duty” to do so.
“To all these people who aren’t vaccinated, you have an obligation to yourselves, to your family and, quite frankly (I know I’ll get criticized for this), to your country,” Biden said. “Get vaccinated now. It’s free. It’s convenient. I promise you, it saves lives. And I honest to God believe it’s your patriotic duty.”
He also called on eligible Americans to get their booster shots.
“I got my booster shot as soon as they were available,” Biden said. “And just the other day, former President Donald Trump announced that he had gotten his booster shot. It may be one of the few things he and I agree on.”
Just 30 percent of fully vaccinated people have had a booster dose, according to CDC data.
Biden’s policy updates, as well as his increasingly urgent tone, come a mere three weeks after he announced his previous “winter plan” to battle Omicron in a similar speech at the National Institutes of Health — a reflection both of how speedily the variant has spread and of how its explosive growth has caught the U.S. off guard.
On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that Omicron, which was first detected in the U.S. on December 1, is already the country’s dominant variant, having rocketed from 12.6 percent of cases to 73.2 percent of cases in the span of a single week. It took the hypercontagious Delta variant about four months to achieve such dominance.
The same day, 298,761 new COVID-19 cases were reported nationwide — just shy of the country’s single-day record of 300,777 set last January.
Dense, interconnected cities are getting slammed first. In New York City, cases are up 277 percent over the last two weeks. In Honolulu, they’re up 828 percent. In Houston, they’re up 442 percent. In Miami, they’re up 219 percent. In Cleveland, they’re up 170 percent.
Yet experts predict that Omicron, which can dodge immunity better than any of its predecessors, will soon spread beyond major metropolitan areas to every corner of the country, potentially triggering more than 1 million U.S. cases per day — a previously unthinkable number.
The president said the country is in a much better place than it was in March 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic first hit.
More than 200 million Americans have now been fully vaccinated, Biden said. In March 2020, there were none.
“What that means is today, a case of COVID-19 for a fully vaccinated and boosted person will most likely mean no symptoms — or mild ones similar to the common respiratory virus,” the president said.
As Omicron has taken hold, it has become increasingly clear that the U.S. is not going to counter it with mask mandates, restrictions or social distancing. Vaccinated Americans have little appetite — or reason, given that Omicron is unlikely to make them very sick — to revert to 2020-style lockdowns. Most unvaccinated Americans, meanwhile, have long opposed precautionary measures of any kind. Policymakers are following their lead, Biden included.
According to an internal Biden administration document providing updates on the pandemic, almost 92 percent of all counties in the United States have had “high or substantial community transmission” of COVID in the past seven days.
The document, dated December 21 and marked “For Official Use Only,” also says the Omicron variant has been detected in almost every U.S. state.
