Dr. Fauci, top US infectious disease official, is on the wires saying:
- real world evidence accumulating on omicron Covid 19 variant show likely higher degree of transmissibility
- Too early to determine omicron's severity, but early information on initial cases appear to show it is less severe
- early cases of omicron seem to show less hospitalization, less need for oxygen, but still need more data
- still unclear how omicron impacts of vaccine antibodies, expects to get more data next week
