The President’s speech, underway now, isn’t about shutting the US down, Psaki says. But he is issuing a stark warning to the unvaccinated.

President Biden will “announce additional steps” in the fight against Covid-19 during his planned remarks about the Omicron variant Tuesday, the White House said, but he won’t necessarily talk about additional restrictions in the face of rising cases.

Biden is expected to announce a purchase of a half-billion at-home rapid Covid-19 tests and a plan to distribute them free to Americans who request them through a website, one of a series of new steps he’ll unveil as the country faces a potentially crippling wintertime surge of infections.

The 500 million new tests will be made available next month and will reach Americans through the mail, the official said. The administration is still working to determine how many tests each household may request.

The President’s speech today follows a meeting he held Monday with members of his Covid-19 response team.

Psaki said Biden will “issue a stark warning and make clear unvaccinated individuals will continue to drive hospitalizations and deaths.”

“That is not trying to scare people – or maybe it is, trying to make clear to people in the country what the risks are here of not being vaccinated,” she continued. “What is clear is that we’re not in the same place that we were in.”

“To be clear,” Psaki added, “Covid-19 is not the same threat to fully vaccinated individuals that it was in March 2020.”

New modeling from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that Omicron cases will likely cause higher case rates than we’ve seen with previous peaks, the agency posted on its website this week.

Previously, cases peaked at their highest level in January 2021, with 7-day averages exceeding 250,000 new cases per day. Last week, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, told CNN that ”we might see hundreds of thousands of cases every day – maybe even a million cases in a day from Omicron.”

Experts say this doesn’t mean hospitalizations and deaths will rise at the same level we’ve seen with earlier surges, in part because the country has higher levels of immunity to Covid-19, and also because early data suggest Omicron may causes less severe disease.

Still, CDC notes that Omicron cases could still lead to “surges of hospital demand even if severity is reduced, because of the large number of anticipated cases occurring in a short period of time.”

CDC’s modeling looks at a number of scenarios by asking two key questions: How much more transmissible is Omicron versus Delta, and how well does Omicron evade the immunity we get through vaccination or prior infection?

With low immune evasion, for example, peaks would be lower and occur several months later. But CDC says emerging case data “are consistent with the faster growth scenarios.”

”Upcoming holiday gatherings may further accelerate these trends,” CDC adds.

On Monday, CDC posted separate estimates that Omicron accounted for nearly three-quarters of cases last week.

New York, like many other parts of the country, is seeing “a serious increased demand for testing,” said Dr. Neal Shipley, medical director of Northwell-GoHealth Urgent Care, adding that while they are not short on tests, they really need a “little bit of breathing room.” 

“Unfortunately, it feels a lot like it did last year, where the demand for testing and the surge is really straining the health system,” he told CNN. “We don’t have testing shortages right now … What we really need is a little bit of breathing room.”

Asymptomatic people should consider taking a home test if they can, he added.

“What we really want to do in the urgent care is test the sick and the ill, and help distinguish those who have Covid from those who don’t … So what we need is a little bit of breathing room,” he said.

Currently, the facility is serving New Yorkers who are sick, who are getting tested because they have been exposed to the virus and those who are getting tested ahead of a family visit for Christmas, according to Shipley.

“But it posed challenges for us because demand is very high,” he said. “The challenge right now is also flu season. There is lots of other respiratory viruses out there … and they all look like Covid at the beginning. Everybody has a cough. Everybody has a fever. Everybody feels lousy. The challenge is to distinguish those from Covid [patients] and get those people the care they need.” 

Shipley emphasized the importance of vaccines, boosters, masking, social distancing and hand-washing, which have been the expert guidelines for protection against Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.

Watch:

There is “no answer yet” on whether vaccines will need to be adapted with different compositions in order to tackle Omicron, or other potential coronavirus variants, the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) Executive Director Emer Cooke said in a media briefing Tuesday. 

“From a regulatory perspective, we are prepared in case there is a need to change the existing vaccines or therapeutics,” she added. 

In its final regular media briefing of 2021, the EMA stressed that Europe is in a “stronger position than this time last year,” due to having “five vaccines and six treatments” to fight the virus. 

“Although we’re seeing increased transmission of the virus, all the data shows that the authorized vaccines help to protect us from death, severe disease, and hospitalization,” Cooke told reporters.

Reducing the length of isolation for people who have received a positive Covid-19 test is something under consideration, particularly for health care workers, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN.

While no decisions have been made yet, the discussion is underway.

“At least considered, no decisions yet, about the possibility of if you do have someone who’s infected, rather than keeping them out for seven to 10 days, if they are without symptoms, put an N95 mask on them, make sure they have the proper PPE, and they might be able to get back to work sooner than the full length of the quarantine period,” Fauci said.

Asked again if there was at least a consideration for changing the recommendation and reducing it from 10 days, Fauci said, “Yes. There is a consideration. It’s being discussed.”

The Omicron variant now represents a third of new cases of Covid-19 in Paris and 10% of all infections in France, government spokesperson Gabriel Attal told journalists on Tuesday.

Attal said the country is “entering a zone of turbulence” but added that it had “the weapons to fight.”

Attal said the government would hold an exceptional meeting on December 27 to discuss its plan to introduce vaccination passes.

Last week, the French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that a draft law would be submitted to parliament in early January, to transform the current health pass system into a vaccination pass.

The change means only vaccinated people would be able to go to restaurants and enter public venues if the policy is approved by the French parliament.  

As of now, vaccinated people and people who have a negative PCR test or antigen test from the last 24 hours can get a health pass.

As Covid-19 infections surge in various parts of the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, emphasized focusing on the severity of cases instead of the number of cases. He admitted that breakthrough infections will continue but they don’t accurately represent the impact of the virus on society at large.

Meanwhile, President Biden is expected to announce a purchase of a half-billion at-home rapid Covid-19 tests and a plan to distribute them for free to Americans who request them through a website, one of a series of new steps he’ll unveil as the country faces a potentially crippling wintertime surge of infections.

This comes as many parts of the country see long lines for Covid-19 testing along with a shortage of at-home tests. But Fauci said that while testing is important, it’s a supplement to vaccinations and masking.

“Testing is important, as is masking. But the real important thing that people need to do is get vaccinated. If you are vaccinated fully, to get boosted. That’s the main front line of protection. Testing is an important supplement to that,” the top US infectious disease expert told CNN.

He acknowledged the lack of testing availability to meet the demand, but said that President Biden’s plan to purchase tests and distribute will remedy that issue.

Germany’s public health authority has called for an immediate introduction of additional coronavirus restrictions to curb the spread of the virus in the country.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has called for new curbs on contacts, the speeding up of vaccination and boosters and strict restrictions on travel, accompanied by effective communication as to why the rules are needed. 

The institute said the new rules should come into effect immediately and stay in place until at least January.

RKI said that while case numbers have been going down in recent days, the Omicron variant is expected to drive them back up in the coming weeks. 

Thailand is scrapping exemptions from mandatory travel quarantine as it tries to curb the spread of the Omicron variant, the government announced on Tuesday.

Starting Wednesday midnight local time, even fully vaccinated travelers coming from countries with low transmission rates will be required to undergo a hotel quarantine for seven to ten days.

Thailand, which is economically dependent on tourism, launched a “Test & Go program” in November. It allowed visitors from low-risk countries to spend a night in quarantine while waiting for their test results. Once negative, they were free to leave.

That program is now being suspended, although the government said those who have already registered for the program can still take advantage of the shortened quarantine period.

Meanwhile, a separate program that requires visitors to remain in a specific location but allows them free movement outside of their accommodation will be suspended across the country from Wednesday, with the exception of Phuket, a popular travel destination, it added.