Omicron 'will find just about everybody,' Fauci says as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations surge
- The Omicron coronavirus variant "will find just about everybody," Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday.
- He said those who were unvaccinated "are going to get the brunt of the severe aspect of this."
The highly contagious Omicron coronavirus variant "will find just about everybody," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious-disease expert, said as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continued to surge and break records throughout the nation.
"I think in many respects, Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody," Fauci said during a virtual chat on Tuesday with the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added: "Those who have been vaccinated, and vaccinated and boosted, would get exposed. Some, maybe a lot of them, will get infected but will very likely, with some exceptions, do reasonably well in the sense of not having hospitalization and death."
However, Fauci said, those who remain unvaccinated against COVID-19 "are going to get the brunt of the severe aspect of this."
"Although it is less severe on a case-by-case basis when you quantitatively have so many people who are infected, a fraction of them — even if it's a small fraction — are going to get seriously ill and are going to die, and that's the reason why it will challenge our health system," Fauci said.
The US is reporting nearly 1 million new coronavirus infections a day, with more than 150,000 people hospitalized with the disease and over 1,200 COVID-19 deaths daily, Fauci added.
The Omicron variant accounts for about 95% of the cases, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We're not at that point where this is an acceptable 'let's live with it now,' but I believe we will get there," Fauci said.
Fauci said the tide would turn on the coronavirus pandemic when there was "enough protection in the community" and "enough drugs available" to treat severe cases of COVID-19.
"When we get there, there's that transition," Fauci said, adding: "We may be on the threshold of that right now."
He added: "It's entirely possible."
According to the latest data from the CDC, nearly 208 million people in the US — or 62.6% of the population — are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.