Dr Anthony Fauci, top US infectious disease expert, on Wednesday asked Americans, even the ones who received a booster dose, to avoid going to large gatherings during the holiday season. His statement comes as the seven-day average of COVID-19 cases in the United States rose 25% from the previous week to about 149,300 cases per day. 

With Christmas and New Year’s coming, Fauci showed a thumbs up to small family get-togethers with additional safety measures like testing. However, he said that large gatherings, especially the ones where one people do not know each other’s vaccination status, should be avoided. 

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“There are many of these parties that have 30, 40, 50 people in which you do not know the vaccination status of individuals. Those are the kind of functions in the context of Omicron that you do not want to go to,” Fauci said at a White House briefing.

His statements come on the day Pfizer’s COVID-19 anti-viral pill Paxlovid was approved by the FDA. President Joe Biden hailed the move as a ‘significant step’ out of the pandemic. 

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Fauci cited studies from South Africa and Scotland to say that early evidence indicates omicron, now the dominant one in the US, is less severe than the Delta variant. 

“This is good news. However, we must wait to see what happens in our own population which has its own demographic considerations,” he said.

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As per the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky, the country saw a 25% rise in COVID-19 cases from the last week. Average daily deaths were up 3.5% at 1,200. 

The omicron variant represents approximately 73% of cases across the country, said Walensky. 

“This increase in Omicron proportion is what we anticipated and what we have been preparing for,” she said.