Unvaxxed population most vulnerable to Omicron, says US health expert

US infectious disease analyst Dr Anthony Fauci has warned that COVID-19 cases may go up further as the Omicron variant spreads across the globe.

“If you have many, many, many more people with a less level of severity, that might kind of neutralize the positive effect of having less severity when you have so many more people,” said Fauci, adding the US health department’s worried about those who haven’t taken the vaccine yet. “Those (the unvaxxed) are the most vulnerable ones when you have a virus that is extraordinarily effective in getting to people,” he said while speaking to ABC news channel’s “This Week” show.

Speaking further, Fauci said: “Every day it goes up and up. The last weekly average was about 150,000 and it likely will go much higher.”

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP), last week, just before Christmas, the US had recorded more than 51 million COVID positive cases with 800,000 deaths due to the infection till mid-December.

Also read: No need for Omicron-specific shot, existing vaccines enough: Top COVID expert

The US declared last week that Omicron has taken over Delta as the dominant strain. Studies have found shown that while the Omicron strain is highly transmissible, it is less severe causing fewer hospitalizations. Fauci, however, said the world cannot afford to be complacent about it.

India’s Omicron case count rose to 578 on Monday (December 27), as per the data released by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Meanwhile, 6,531 new cases and 7,141 recoveries were reported in the last 24 hours. The active caseload currently stands at 75,841, while the recovery rate stands at 98.40 per cent.