Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky, confirmed on Wednesday that the Omicron coronavirus strain is behind the ongoing largest COVID-19 outbreak in the United States to date.
While Walensky estimated that Omicron would continue to circulate across the country during the coming weeks, she stressed that hospitalizations and deaths have so far remained incomparably low versus the Delta variant. "Early indications suggest Omicron is milder than Delta, especially among vaccinated," Walensky noted.
At a press briefing by White House's COVID-19 response team, the government's chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci urged Americans to request a booster vaccine dose saying that the third jab would bring back the level of protection needed to provide immunity against the highly transmissible Omicron strain.
