Beautiful Virgin Islands

Wednesday, Oct 15, 2025

Fauci says Omicron surge will continue and Americans must not be complacent

Fauci says Omicron surge will continue and Americans must not be complacent

Biden medical adviser admits US has to ‘do better’ on access to testing but welcomes Trump support for Covid vaccines
Cases of Covid-19 will continue to surge worldwide due to the Omicron variant, the US chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said on Sunday, warning Americans not to get complacent amid reports that the variant is less harmful than others.

“If you have many, many, many more people with a less level of severity,” Fauci told ABC’s This Week, “that might kind of neutralise the positive effect of having less severity.

“We’re particularly worried about those who are in that unvaccinated class ... those are the most vulnerable ones when you have a virus that is extraordinarily effective in getting to people.”

Fauci also welcomed Donald Trump’s endorsement of Covid-19 vaccines and boosters, saying: “We’ll take anything we can get about getting people vaccinated.”

But Trump prompted rebarbative anger among supporters and amid a huge case surge, with knock-on effects feared for the economy and schools, Fauci also admitted the US had “to do better” on providing access to testing.

Speaking to Axios, Fauci said it was “conceivable that sooner or later everybody will have been infected and/or vaccinated or boosted”.

“When you get to that point,” he said, “unless you have a very bizarre variant come in that evades all protection – which would be unusual – then I think you could get to that point where you have this at a steady level.”

But he also suggested fourth shots might yet be needed. On ABC, he was asked why “we still don’t have affordable tests widely available to anybody who needs it”.

“If you look at the beginning of the [Biden] administration,” Fauci said, “… there were essentially no rapid point-of-care home tests available. Now, there are over nine of them and more coming. Production has been rapidly upscaled.

“… But the situation where you have such a high demand, a conflation of events, Omicron stirring people to get appropriately concerned and wanting to get tested as well as [a] run on tests during the holiday season – we’ve obviously got to do better.

“I think things will improve greatly as we get into January, but that doesn’t help us today and tomorrow. So you’re right, [access to testing] is of concern.”

Another leading public health expert said he did not think the case for possible fourth vaccine shots needed to be made right now.

“If we need it I think our health system is prepared,” Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told Fox News Sunday. “But let’s actually talk about whether we need it or not. And at this moment, based on the data I’ve seen, I’m pretty skeptical that we’re gonna need a fourth shot.

“Part of the question is that we have to ask ourselves what are we trying to do? Are we trying to block every single infection? Maybe that’s our goal. If that’s our goal then yes, maybe we need a fourth shot. Or are we just trying to prevent serious illness and death? Which, of course, I think should be our primary goal.

“So I’m pretty unconvinced at this moment that we need a fourth shot … let’s get a lot more data before we even really start seriously thinking about it.”

Jha also said school closures – feared by many parents – should not be increasing.

“We know how to keep schools open,” he said, “we know how to keep them safe. This really shouldn’t even be on the table. I’m disappointed to see this happening.

“We know that for kids being in school is the right thing for them, for their mental health, for their education. And we have all sorts of tools to keep schools open so I don’t really understand why school districts are [closing schools].

“… There could be times when you have such severe short staffing shortages that it may be hard to keep schools going. That really should be the only context I think at this point.”

More than 816,000 have died from Covid in the US but resistance to vaccinations and other public health measures remains strongest in states and counties that voted for Trump. On ABC, Fauci was asked if he thought the former president’s supporters would listen to his support for vaccines.

“Well, I certainly hope so,” he said. “We’ll take anything we can get about getting people vaccinated.”

But Fauci also said he was “dismayed” when Trump followers in Dallas booed him for supporting vaccines.

“I was stunned by that,” he said. “I mean, given the fact of how popular he is with that group, that they would boo him … tells me how recalcitrant they are about being told what they should do.

“I think that his continuing to say that people should get vaccinated and articulating that to them, in my mind is a good thing. I hope he keeps it up.”

Trump also backed vaccines in an interview with the conservative commentator Candace Owens, saying: “The vaccines work … the ones who get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine … and if you take the vaccine, you’re protected.”

On Instagram, Owens said Trump was backing vaccines because he was “old” and “came from a time before TV, before internet, before being able to conduct … independent research”.

Last week, after Biden recognised his predecessor’s efforts to develop vaccines, Trump said he was “appreciative”. Biden also commended Trump for receiving a booster, saying it “may be one of the few things he and I agree on”.

On Sunday, Vice-President Kamala Harris was asked on CBS’s Face the Nation if the unvaccinated were to blame for the Omicron surge.

“I don’t think this is a moment to talk about fault,” Harris said.

But she added: “It is clear that everyone has the ability to make a choice to save their lives and to prevent hospitalisation if they get vaccinated and if they get the booster. And so I urge people to do that.”
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
DJI Loses Appeal to Remove Pentagon’s ‘Chinese Military Company’ Label
EU Deploys New Biometric Entry/Exit System: What Non-EU Travelers Must Know
Australian Prime Minister’s Private Number Exposed Through AI Contact Scraper
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
×