Experts, White House ramp up omicron warnings as the variant spreads faster than delta

But not everyone agrees on best approach to thwart the dramatic surge. Omicron now forecast to overwhelm hospitals in January even if variant is milder than prior strains.

What you need to know: In less than 10 days, omicron has jumped from an estimated 13% of new cases in the USA in the week ending December 11 to a staggering 73% of new cases in the week ending December 18.

• The variant is far more transmissible than even the delta variant.

• People who have received vaccines plus booster shots are well protected against omicron, delta and other COVID-19 strains. The original two shots of mRNA or one shot of the J&J vaccine are not enough to block omicron without a booster.

• Even if the variant causes milder illness, which is possible but not certain, the number of new infections is on a trajectory to overwhelm hospitals and other resources — even more than earlier in the pandemic.

• Just as holiday celebrations were underway, many theater, sports and business events have been canceled.

• Bottom line: Please get a booster shot right away if you have already been vaccinated, and if you haven’t gotten vaccinated, it’s time. Go to vaccines.gov for a free location near where you are right now.

• Subscribers: Scroll down for links to guidance on safe travel and holiday gatherings.

President Biden takes to the airwaves Tuesday afternoon in another attempt to get the attention of the 40 million or so Americans who remain unvaccinated. With the number of omicron COVID-19 cases growing fast even as delta continues to surge among unvaccinated people, the president will announce how the federal government is responding. The White House message continues to be that the United States has the tools, knowledge and resources to manage omicron and the surge.

According to a senior administration official, the response has three main parts:

• Calling up 1,000 military and other federal medical personnel plus supplies and other assistance for hospitals that are already or soon will be swamped by COVID-19 cases

• Increased testing at 20,000 locations, including FEMA-run testing sites starting this week in New York, with other locations to follow. In January, there will be a federal website where people can request free at-home test kits from a supply of 500 million new test kits the federal government will purchase

• Expanded hours and more locations for vaccinations, including boosters.

“People should feel comfortable celebrating [the holidays] as planned,” if they are fully vaccinated and boosted and wear masks when in indoor public settings, said the official, who spoke on condition that their name would not be used.

What’s unclear is what steps are being taken to reach the 40 million who remain unvaccinated, who have 14 times greater chance of dying from COVID-19 than someone who is fully vaccinated and boosted, according to the CDC.

The stepped-up warnings come as the CDC and other disease modelers calculate that omicron is rising fast in the United States — surging from initial cases to dominant variant in less than a month. That’s three times faster than delta.

The CDC’s somewhat ominous warning is cloaked in the language of epidemiology:

CDC has collaborated with partners to model scenarios of the epidemic trajectory in the U.S. that simultaneously consider transmissibility and immune evasion. Results from scenario analyses indicate that current increases in Omicron cases are likely to lead to a national surge in the coming weeks with peak daily numbers of new infections that could exceed previous peaks; these scenarios may be realized as soon as January. In scenarios with lower immune evasion, a surge is still likely, but the peak could be lower and begin as late as April 2022. Projected large surges in cases indicate surges of hospital demand even if severity is reduced, because of the large number of anticipated cases occurring in a short period of time.