Biden vows Omicron won’t ruin Christmas as US buys 500 million at-home Covid tests and deploys military doctors

Mr Biden will announce steps to combat the Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2 ahead of an expected winter wave

US president Joe Biden warned winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated after meeting with members of the White House Covid Response Team (REUTERS)

As the Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2 rages across the US, President Joe Biden on Tuesday will seek to reassure Americans that they can gather safely with friends and family this Christmas – if they are vaccinated and wear masks when traveling.

Mr Biden is set to address the nation about his administration’s plan for managing the spread of Omicron, which on Monday became the predominant variant of the virus which causes Covid-19 currently circulating throughout the United States.

On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that Mr Biden would not be announcing anything resembling the “lockdowns” which the Trump administration initially supported in the opening weeks of the pandemic last March.

“This is not a speech about locking the country down,” Ms Psaki said. She added that the administration’s recent messaging around Covid-19, including a warning delivered by Mr Biden last week of more hospitalisations and deaths coming for those who are unvaccinated, were not meant to scare anyone, but to “make clear to people in the country what the risks are here of not being vaccinated”.

Speaking to reporters on a Monday evening conference call to preview Mr Biden’s remarks, a senior White House official said: “Many Americans have questions about gathering with family, how to be safer and if we’re headed towards lockdown. The President will answer all of those questions and lay out new steps he’s taking to prepare for rising cases”.

The official said Mr Biden will stress that the US currently has the tools to deal with the Omicron variant, which experts say has several genetic mutations that help it spread far more easily than other variants of Sars-CoV-2.

The president will tell Americans that they will have “a high degree of protection against severe illness” if they have been vaccinated against Covid-19, and even more so if they’ve opted to receive one of the widely available Covid-19 booster shots.

While the official cautioned that there will be fully vaccinated people who test positive for Covid-19, they “will likely have no symptoms or mild symptoms because of that strong protection”.

“The President will tell the American people if they’re vaccinated and follow the process that we all know well, especially while masking while traveling, they should feel comfortable celebrating Christmas and the holidays,” they said, adding that those who’ve chosen to remain unvaccinated will be “at high risk of getting sick”.

“This variant is highly transmissible and the unvaccinated are eight times more likely to be hospitalized and 14 times more likely to die from Covid,” the official said.

Citing the increased transmissibility of Omicron, the official said Mr Biden will outline steps the administration will take “to ensure states and hospitals around the country have the personnel the beds and the supplies they need as they battle rising Omicron cases among the unvaccinated”.

Mr Biden will soon direct Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin to mobilize 1,000 military doctors, nurses, medics and other military personnel to “deploy to overburdened hospitals” over the next two months.

Six 100-person “emergency response teams” composed of paramedics and other “clinical emergency personnel” are also deploying to six states — Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Vermont — at this time, in addition to more than 300 personnel who’ve deployed since the emergence of Omicron.

“God willing, we will not need all of these servicemen and women but if we do, they are ready and they’re mobilized,” the official said.

Additionally, the official said Mr Biden will ask the Federal Emergency Management Agency to activate the agency’s National Response Coordination Centre, as well as preposition “critical supplies and materials” needed to bring more hospital beds online.

“We have hundreds of millions of high-quality masks, billions of gloves, and thousands of ventilators. We’ve prepositioned the supplies in strategic locations across the US so that if a hospital runs out, we can get those supplies to states that need them immediately,” they said.

Continuing, the official said Mr Biden will also announce the purchase of a half-billion at-home rapid Covid tests to be delivered for free to any American who wants them beginning next month, as well as a website that Americans can use to request that tests be sent to them at no charge.

The administration will also set up new federal testing sites around the US – including one to be established in New York City this week – as well as using Fema to stand up new pop-up vaccination clinics and deploying “hundreds of additional federal vaccinators” who will add thousands of appointments of capacity in addition to appointments and capacity being added by pharmacies across the country.

The official said the ”bottom line” Mr Biden will deliver to the American people is that they should “take Omicron seriously,” but the new variant is merely a “cause for concern” and not a “cause for panic”.

“We have the tools, we have the knowledge, the planning to get through this. If you’re fully vaccinated, especially if you got your booster shot, you are highly protected. So that’s what someone’s president will go through tomorrow,” they said.