Dr Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden, has warned that hospital admissions from COVID-19 are rising again in the US.

Speaking on ABC’s ‘This Week’, the top infectious disease expert said that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) might add a negative test report requirement to its shorter isolation period recommendation for asymptomatic infections.

Just last week, the CDC had shortened the recommended time for isolation for asymptomatic Americans with COVID-19 to five days from 10 days. The policy, so far, does not require testing to confirm that a person is no longer infectious before they go back to work or socialize, causing worry among some experts.  

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Dr Fauci’s latest comment came in light of these concerns. “You’re right. There has been some concern about why we don’t ask people at that five-day period to get tested. That is something that is now under consideration. I think we’re going to be hearing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC,” he said to ABC News.

Speaking to CNN on Sunday, the chief medical advisor also cautioned that even though Omicron, the new coronavirus variant possibly behind the recent surge, is believed to be milder than the previous variants, its higher transmissibility means cases could spiral at uncontrollable rates. 

“There will certainly be a lot more cases because this is a much more transmissible virus than Delta is,” Fauci said in the interview.

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“The only difficulty is that if you have so many cases, even if the rate of hospitalisation is lower with Omicron than it is with Delta, there is still the danger that you will have a surging of hospitalizations that might stress the healthcare system,” he added.

Fauci reiterated, however, that the variant appears to be less severe. “It looks, in fact, that it (Omicron) might be less severe, at least from data that we’ve gathered from South Africa, from the UK and even some from preliminary data from here in the United States,” he added.

Health experts in the US have warned Americans of a landslide surge in the coming weeks, as the case count in the country continues to rise.   

Hospital admissions from Covid are rising again, and average daily infections are at a record 400,000, Fauci said to ABC, reported Bloomberg.