Omicron Variant Will Dominate in U.S. Within Weeks, Fauci Says

Bloomberg 

The omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus will assume a dominant role in the U.S. “very soon,” possibly within a few weeks, said Anthony S. Fauci.

“We’re looking over our shoulder at omicron,” Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser for Covid-19, said at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation event. The latest variant of concern, which scientists in South Africa first identified around Thanksgiving, will start to dominate in the U.S. “I would imagine within a period of a few weeks as we go into January,” he said.

The delta variant remains the main source of infections in the U.S., accounting for 96% of cases, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday during a White House press briefing. That means delta is largely responsible for the latest surge to 117,900 cases per day. Cases were down to less than 60,000 per day back in July.

“Delta is still a serious problem,” Fauci said. With the uptick of delta-related infections, the country getting into “the depths of winter,” and “with omicron breathing down our back, things could get really bad, particularly for the unvaccinated.”

But he said that those who are vaccinated and boosted will be relatively well protected against severe disease.

The omicron variant represents about 3% of the cases in the U.S, but it has a doubling time of about three days. By comparison, the delta variant doubled at a rate of about two weeks.

“It is the most transmissible virus of Covid-19 that we’ve had to deal with thus far,” Fauci, who’s also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said about omicron.

South Africa has already been overtaken with the variant and the U.K. also expects the omicron variant to dominate soon. “If things go in the United States the way they’ve gone in other countries—and there’s no reason to believe that that won’t be the case—it will soon become dominant here,” he said.