WHO director recommends you cancel or postpone holiday events amid COVID-19 surge: 'Better than a life canceled'
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Jake Epstein,Erin Schumaker
Dec 21, 2021, 04:33 IST
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks during a press conference on December 20, 2021 at the WHO headquarters in Geneva.Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director, advised canceling holiday plans as COVID-19 cases spike.
Top US health officials say the Omicron variant will be dominant in the US within weeks.
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The World Health Organization's director-general recommended on Monday that people cancel or postpone their holiday events as the new Omicron variant drives a spike in COVID-19 cases.
"An event canceled is better than a life canceled," Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference.
He added: "It's better to cancel now and celebrate later, than to celebrate now and grieve later."
The director-general's comments come as the Omicron variant spreads across the world at a rapid pace, breaking records in several countries, Insider's Marianne Guenot previously reported.
In the United States, the seven-day rolling average for new COVID-19 infections was 125,775 on Friday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The nation's seven-day average test positivity rate currently stands at 7.2%, higher than the 5% threshold the WHO recommends staying below.
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New York State has been particularly hard hit, logging 21,027 positive COVID-19 cases Thursday, the highest number of single-day new infections the state has reported since the pandemic began, according to state data.
Omicron will be dominant in the US in weeks, top health officials say
The United States' troubling surge is thought to be fueled by the highly infectious Omicron variant, which was first identified last month. In areas with local Omicron transmission, infections are doubling every 1.5 to 3 days, per the WHO.
"Although Delta continues to circulate widely in the United States, Omicron is increasing rapidly," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said during a Friday White House briefing. "We expect it to become the dominant strain in the United States, as it has in other countries, in the coming weeks."
"It's going to take over," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said of Omicron during an interview with CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday. He stressed that Americans should get vaccinated and topped off with booster shots if they haven't already, adding, "Be prudent in everything else you do: When you travel in your indoor settings that are congregated, wear a mask."
But although Fauci warned Americans earlier this month of a "really dark time ahead" come mid-January, he has stopped short of telling them not to gather for the holidays.
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Instead, he advised getting tested before attending indoor celebrations and avoiding gatherings entirely if it wasn't clear that all guests had been vaccinated.
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