President Joe Biden on Tuesday said Americans that are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can safely celebrate the holidays, even as new cases surge due to the highly mutated Omicron variant as it begins to make its way across the United States.
"If you are vaccinated and follow the precautions that we all know well, you should feel comfortable celebrating Christmas and the holidays as you planned it," Biden said in a national address given at the White House on Tuesday. "You've done the right thing. You can enjoy the holiday season."
However, Biden added that the holiday season is potentially dangerous for the unvaccinated, saying that they are at more risk than ever of getting sick due to the Omicron variant.
"If you get sick, you're likely to spread it to others, including friends and family," Biden said. "And the unvaccinated have a significantly higher risk of ending up in a hospital or even dying."
"Almost everyone who has died from COVID-19 in the past many months have been unvaccinated," Biden added, pleading with unvaccinated Americans who are eligible to get the shot to go as soon as possible in obligation to themselves, their loved ones, and their country.
Biden's remarks come as the the U.S. is seeing a substantial rise in COVID cases, fueled by the fast-spreading Omicron variant. The new strain currently makes up more than 70% of sequenced new cases, according to data compiled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), replacing Delta as the new dominant strain in the country. Just one week ago, Omicron made up only 12.6% of sequenced infections.
To combat the extremely transmissible variant, the Biden administration is making major changes to its winter COVID-19 plan, including more testing, increased hospital support and vaccination efforts.
The main component of the new plan is that the administration will purchase 500 million COVID rapid tests to ship for free right to Americans homes to beef up self-testing and quarantine rates to stop the spread. The first test shipments will begin in January, with Americans being able to order the tests online, which will then be sent by U.S. mail.
The federal government will also establish new testing sites and increase test manufacturing through the use of the Defense Production Act. The first new site will open in New York, which has become the Omicron epicenter, this week.
Another part of the new plan is the federal deployment of an additional medically trained troops to assist hospitals in areas where infections are surging, starting with Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire and Vermont. The administration also plans to ready additional ventilators and personal protective equipment for the nation's stockpile to help overwhelmed hospital systems.
Biden is has also deployed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide hundreds of ambulances and paramedic teams to areas of need throughout the country.
Above all, mass vaccination efforts remains the White House's main defence. To better fight Omicron, the federal government will support multiple vaccination sites and provide hundreds of personnel to administer both initial and booster shots of vaccines developed by Pfizer
