A first case of the Omicron variant was detected in the United States, in San Francisco, Wednesday 1er December, on a vaccinated patient returning from South Africa, then a second, the next day, with a national of the State of Minnesota returning from New York. Omicron is there, but President Joe Biden has refused to reconfigure America as the Covid-19 pandemic, which still kills 1,000 people a day, has caused 782,000 deaths and affected 48.6 million US residents. Objective, to leave the country and its economy open.
“The new variant is cause for concern, but not for panic. We will fight with science and speed, and not in chaos and confusion ”, explained, Thursday, December 2, President Biden, recalling that he was not acting “With closures or confinements”, but with “No more vaccines, no more reminders, no more tests”.
The Biden plan encourages vaccination and generalizes free Covid tests, but it does not for the moment introduce an additional vaccination obligation, nor does it really hinder entry into the territory of the United States: all passengers in direction of the country will have to do a Covid test (PCR or antigen) the day before their embarkation – against three days previously -, but will not have to undergo quarantine on their arrival. the “Travel ban” for the moment only concerns flights from southern Africa. New measures are however possible, since the spokesperson for the White House explained on the same Thursday that “Nothing is excluded” on air constraints to counter the pandemic.
Reduce school closures
Much of the scheme is domestic, which aims to keep schools open and allow Americans to work, while the summer surge of the Delta variant has hampered economic recovery and exacerbated labor shortages, problems that the variant Omicron could amplify. The peak of the Delta variant epidemic was reached in early September, with 165,000 cases reported per day on average. This number fell back to 85,000.
In detail, the Biden device encourages the generalization of vaccine boosters to the entire population, while medical authorities had been hesitant in recent weeks. All children aged 5 and over are invited to be vaccinated while vaccination centers will multiply. The government will finance studies for vaccination of children under 5 years old.
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