WASHINGTON — Top federal health officials on Tuesday defended the Biden administration’s efforts to protect Americans from the highly contagious Omicron variant, facing withering accusations from senators about the scarcity of coronavirus tests and confusing guidance on how soon people who test positive for the virus can return to normal life.In a nearly four-hour hearing, lawmakers charged that the administration remained woefully unable to meet the demand for at-home tests, noting that the White House would fulfill its pledge to send 500 million of them to American households for free only after the current surge had peaked.The health officials testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions during one of the most trying weeks yet in the administration’s struggle with the pandemic. Infection rates are skyrocketing nationwide, and hospitals set a single-day record on Sunday for the number of patients with the virus, surpassing last winter’s peak.While Democratic senators offered only gentle criticism, Republicans were unsparing, claiming that President Biden and his pandemic response team had mangled public health strategy and messaging.“Most Americans can’t make heads or tails of anything coming out of this administration,” Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, said. “I’m getting texts as we speak, sitting here, asking, ‘Where do I get the test?’ We spent billions on this.”The officials who testified said they had mounted an all-out effort to test, treat and vaccinate Americans in the middle of a shape-shifting pandemic that had suddenly reached a new inflection point with the Omicron variant.“It’s hard to process what’s actually happening right now, which is, most people are going to get Covid,” said Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, offering one of the federal government’s most pointed acknowledgments of Omicron’s impact since the variant arrived in the United States.“What we need to do is make sure the hospitals can still function, transportation, you know, other essential services are not disrupted while this happens,” she added.Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Mr. Biden’s chief medical adviser, said the virus had “fooled everybody all the time, from the time it first came in, to Delta, to now Omicron,” adding, “We’re doing the best we possibly can.”ImageDr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said the virus had “fooled everybody all the time, from the time it first came in, to Delta, to now Omicron.”Credit...Pool photo by Greg NashThe hearing came as the Omicron variant, coupled with the Delta variant, has strained hospital systems and caused businesses to struggle to stay open because of staff shortages. An average of more than 735,000 infections are being reported in the United States each day, according to a New York Times database.On average over the last seven days, more than 135,000 people were hospitalized with the virus, an 83 percent increase from two weeks ago. The hospitalization totals include people who test positive for the virus incidentally after being admitted for conditions unrelated to Covid-19, but there is no national data showing how many people are in that category.Modeling scenarios cited in an internal government document dated Jan. 5 and obtained by The New York Times suggest there will be more than a million confirmed infections per day by the end of the month.That number is widely viewed as a vast undercount because of the scarcity of tests and the widespread failure of people to report positive results from at-home tests to government authorities. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent health research center at the University of Washington, estimated last week that daily infections had already risen to six million, and it predicted that more than half of Americans would be infected by the Omicron variant over the next six weeks. Public health experts have said that many cases will be mild or asymptomatic.Senior Biden administration officials said in interviews on Monday that infections and hospitalizations were expected to peak nationwide by the end of January and then plummet sharply. But Dr. Fauci warned on Tuesday that peaks and valleys would not look the same across the United States.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Latest Updates
Updated Jan. 11, 2022, 5:30 p.m. ETThe Met will pay its guards more to address Covid-related shortages.Quebec introduces a financial penalty for the unvaccinated.A popular at-home test detects most infectious Omicron cases, a study suggests.The hearing took a detour early on with a fierce back-and-forth between Dr. Fauci and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. The senatorBy: Noah Weiland and Sharon LaFraniere
Title: Criticized by Senators, U.S. Health Officials Defend Omicron Response
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/health/fauci-senate-hearing-omicron-response.html
Published Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2022 01:13:59 +0000
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