President Joe Biden said on Monday he would support an effort to shorten COVID-19 quarantine requirements for those who test positive for the novel coronavirus if U.S. health authorities recommend such a change.
With new Covid-19 cases rising to their highest levels in the U.S. in months, more than 25% of hospitals in 13 states are struggling with critical shortages of nurses, doctors and other medical staff—forcing some to turn away sick patients and leaving hundreds of hospital beds unused as experts forecast the staffing crisis will only intensify in the weeks ahead.
An unvaccinated man with underlying health conditions died in Texas on Monday after testing positive for the COVID-19 omicron variant, officials in Houston said, marking what is believed to be the first death linked to the strain in the U.S.
The Biden administration will distribute 500 million free at-home Covid-19 testing kits to Americans and take steps to deploy federal medical personnel to overburdened hospitals this winter, as the Omicron variant spreads around the country.
Laboratory studies suggest T cells, another kind of immune cell, can offer vaccinated people protection against severe disease from the variant. Britain set a daily record for new known cases, and N.Y.U. canceled events because of a surge.
Alan Levine, CEO of Ballad Health, published a string of tweets Sunday outlining his expectations for Omicron variant and citing concerns over cancelled elective surgeries. "It is easy to assume because Omicron appears to have a lower virulence, that its not a big deal," Levine said. "Not true. Its infectiousness is very high, so we expect an increase in hospitalizations, and people will die, particularly those who are unvaccinated."