US President Joe Biden’s Omicron address will not be about new restrictions: White House

US President Joe Biden is set to address the country about his administration’s efforts to slow the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 on Tuesday. However, he will not be speaking about any new restrictions on business and public life, White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed. 

“This is not a speech about locking the country down. This is a speech outlining and being direct and clear with the American people about the benefits of being vaccinated, the steps we’re going to take to increase access and to increase testing, and the risks posed to being unvaccinated,” Psaki said, giving a preview to the address. 

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“He’ll talk about what to expect as we head into the winter months and detail additional steps that we will be taking.” 

President Biden’s address will take place a couple days after the country’s leading infectious disease expert, White House’s top medical adviser, said that “the real problem” for the U.S. hospital system is that “we have so many people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who have not yet been vaccinated.”

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 “The president will restate that while vaccinated individuals get COVID-19 due to the highly transmissible nature of omicron, their cases will likely be mild or asymptomatic. we continue to see and our health experts assess that you are 14 times more likely to die of COVID-19 if you have not been vaccinated,” Psaki added. 

The press secretary further said that Biden will issue a stark warning for unvaccinated individuals. 

“For those who choose to remain unvaccinated, he’ll issue a stark warning and make clear unvaccinated individuals will continue to drive hospitalizations and deaths. He’s not trying to scare people, or maybe it is trying to make clear to people the risks of not being vaccinated.”

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The prospect of a winter chilled by a wave of coronavirus infections is a severe reversal from the optimism projected by Biden some 10 months ago, when he suggested at a CNN town hall that the country would essentially be back to normal by this Christmas. Biden has been careful not to overpromise, yet confidence in the country has been battered by an unrelenting wave of COVID-19 mutations and variations that have left many Americans emotionally exhausted, dispirited and worried about infections.

With inputs from the Associated Press