Vice President Kamala Harris said that the Biden administration 'didn't see Omicron coming'

• Vice President Kamala Harris said the Biden administration didn't see Delta or Omicron coming.
• The CDC predicts more than 40,000 additional COVID-19 deaths by January 8.

Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday the Biden administration did not foresee the emergence of new coronavirus strains like Omicron, according to the Los Angeles Times.

"We didn't see Delta coming. I think most scientists did not — upon whose advice and direction we have relied — didn't see Delta coming," Harris told the Times in an interview. "We didn't see Omicron coming. And that's the nature of what this, this awful virus has been, which as it turns out, has mutations and variants."

Disease experts have predicted Omicron will fuel another wave of COVID-19 infections this winter and could become dominant in the US by early next year, potentially surpassing Delta as the most common strain.

Early data suggests Omicron may be more transmissible but cause less severe illness than other coronavirus strains, Insider's Aria Bendix reported.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention predicts that COVID-19 cases and deaths will increase in the US over the next month, with its latest model projecting more than 40,000 deaths by January 8.

Those predictions may already be coming to fruition in New York, which on Friday reported 21,027 new COVID-19 cases in a single day, the highest the state has ever recorded.