During a conversation on Tuesday with J. Stephen Morrison, the Senior Vice President with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Fauci stressed that while the highly transmissible strain is everywhere, mainly unvaccinated people will feel the "brunt" of any severe illnesses.
"Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody," Fauci stated, according to CNN. "Those who have been vaccinated ... and boosted would get exposed. Some, maybe a lot of them, will get infected but will very likely, with some exceptions, do reasonably well in the sense of not having hospitalization and death."
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The Omicron variant, the first cases of which were detected in South Africa in November, has become the dominant strain in the United States and many other regions across the world. Early data show that it is more transmissible than other variants yet causes less severe illness.
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With the spread of Omicron, cases are surging nationwide, leading to renewed challenges for hospitals and health emergencies.
To date, 61,732,283 COVID-19 cases have been reported in the U.S., according to the CDC's COVID Data Tracker. A total of 837,274 coronavirus-related deaths have been recorded.
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A total of 247,695,845 people in the U.S. have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Coronavirus tracker. More than 208,000,000 people are considered to be fully vaccinated against the virus.
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Earlier, in unusually emotional congressional testimony, the 81-year-old director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases slammed vaccine skeptic Republican Senator Rand Paul for unleashing “crazies” who were threatening his life and harassing his family.
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President Joe Biden’s top officials, including Fauci, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walenksy, and acting Food and Drug Administration (FDA) head Janet Woodcock were summoned to testify before the Senate about the pandemic.
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While many fellow lawmakers focused their questions on the lack of adequate testing and confusing new guidelines on how infected people should end their isolation, Paul, who has railed against vaccine mandates and refused to get vaccinated, said Fauci was personally to blame for people’s deaths.
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Paul faulted Fauci for hundreds of thousands of deaths that occurred since Biden took office — although the vast majority of those fatalities were unvaccinated and health officials, including Fauci, have consistently advocated for vaccines.
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“You personally attack me and with absolutely not a shred of evidence of anything you say,” Fauci reacted.
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