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The nation’s leading infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci OK’d small, at-home New Year’s Eve gatherings among vaccinated and boosted individuals on Wednesday, but he urged Americans to cancel plans to attend larger parties as conditions become more grim amid the omicron variant.
“If your plans are to go to a 40- to 50-person New Year’s Eve party with all the bells and whistles and everybody hugging and kissing and wishing each other a happy new year, I would strongly recommend that this year we do not do that,” Fauci said during the White House COVID-19 briefing Wednesday.
For smaller gatherings, Fauci warned that “although the risk is never zero in anything, the risk is low enough that we feel you should continue to go through with those plans of having a home-related vaccinated, boosted gathering with family and close friends who are also vaccinated and boosted.”
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The advice comes after the U.S. saw a single-day new coronavirus case record of 441,000 reported on Monday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – a massive jump from the previous daily record of nearly 300,000 cases reported in early January.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky on Wednesday said the rapid increase in cases is in large part due to the highly transmissible omicron variant.
“In a few short weeks, omicron has rapidly increased across the country. And we expect it will continue to circulate in the coming weeks,” Walensky said.