Dr. Fauci said on Sunday that it was okay for kids to return to school; however he’s urging parents to get their kids vaccinated. Students are scurrying back to school after the holiday break during a peak in the massive Omicron surge.
“There’s no doubt about it, the acceleration of cases that we have seen is really unprecedented, gone well beyond anything we have seen before”, Dr. Fauci said.
“We are definitely in the middle of a very severe surge and uptick in cases. We’re now at an average of about 400,000 cases per day. Hospitalizations are up”. Fauci said. He says he felt the hospitals might be swamped due to the peak in COVID-19 cases. On top of that, doctors can’t differentiate the proper treatment between Omicron and Delta; adding another layer to the chaos.
Although Fauci says it may boil down to a mandatated negative COVID test result upon five day quarantine, CDC announced that instead of 10 days, after a positive COVID result; it’s now only 5 days. However, that news was not received very well. The CDC faced backlash for saying people with no symptoms could isolate for five days instead of 10.
With airlines shutting down thousands of flights, it’s evident we need to take the second round of this pandemic seriously.
“I think we cannot deny that fact. It is something that when we look back in history, it will be comparable to what we saw in 1918,” he said, referring to the deadly influenza epidemic that lasted from February 1918 to April 1920 and infected 500 million people around the world.