Chief Medical Advisor to the US president, Anthony Fauci, watches as US President Joe Biden speaks on the Covid-19 omicron variant in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC on November 29, 2021. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP)
Top US infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has warned of a new high in the number of deaths over the latest variant of Covid-19, omicron.
He made the comments during an interview with CNN, in which he was asked whether he expected new record high numbers for cases as well as hospitalizations and deaths.
"I think that that is going to happen," Fauci confirmed. "We are going to see a significant stress in some regions of the country on the hospital system, particularly in those areas where you have a low level of vaccination, which is one of the reasons why we continue to stress the importance of getting those unvaccinated people vaccinated."
He added that the US officials were aware of the possibility of a new variant but did not expect it to have so many mutations.
"We definitely saw variants coming. I think what one referred to, what was not anticipated was the extent of the mutations and the amino acid substitutions in Omicron, which is really unprecedented," Fauci said. "It kind of came out of nowhere, where you have a virus that has 50 mutations, 30 of which are in the spike protein, and 10 or 12 of which are in the receptor binding domain. I mean, to me, thats really quite unprecedented."
He further anticipated "tough" times for US hospitals and the healthcare sector in the efforts to handle the new variant.
"It is going to be tough. We cant walk away from that... We cant, because, with omicron that were dealing with, it is going to be a tough few weeks to months as we get deeper into the winter," Fauci said.
The omicron variant, which was found in the US earlier this month, is said to have a much higher transmissibility than the previous variants.
"Well, the one thing thats very clear, and theres no doubt about this, is its extraordinary capability of spreading, its transmissibility capability. It is just, you know, raging through the world, really," Fauci told NBC earlier.
Omicron was first detected in South Africa last month and soon spread across many countries including in America and Europe.
Omicron is expected to become the dominant of the virus, according to the World Health Organization.
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