CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the omicron variation of Coronavirus had “more than 50 mutations, and because of those, just getting two doses may not be enough” before the holiday season.
Walensky told CNBC’s “News with Shepard Smith“on Monday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “checked” its definition of full immunization. Currently, the agency defines full immunization as two weeks after the second dose of vaccination. of either vaccine from Moderna or Pfizer or two weeks after a dose of the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson.
Even so, Walensky said the vaccine “may not prevent infection” according to the data to date. This means people need to “continue to wear their masks to prevent infection in general,” she said.
Omicron has become the dominant variant in the US accounts for 73% of all reported cases. Based on the growth rate of omicrons, Walensky said, she “predicts this number to be high around this time.”
The CDC director said there have been reports of omicron deaths, “though only a handful of those, fewer than we’ve seen in other variants to date.”
Walensky recommends vaccination and booster shots as the best prevention of death, and says that vaccinated people have “a 20 times lower risk of dying than the unvaccinated population”. On Monday, Moderna announced its boost effective against omicron, but it still plans to create a new shot specifically for the variant.
Before the holidays, Walensky recommends gathering families to get tested “to make sure that … people don’t gather when they have a symptomatic infection.”
