Omicron variant cases are doubling every two to three days, French Health Minister Olivier Veran told a parliamentary health commission in Paris Wednesday.
Omicron variant cases are doubling every two to three days, French Health Minister Olivier Veran told a parliamentary health commission in Paris Wednesday. Veran also told French lawmakers that his European colleagues are also seeing a similar trend. To curb the spread of Omicron, the French government will require a vaccine pass that will to come into force from Jan.15 in restaurants as well as in some of the country’s public transportation and proof of vaccination will be required. Hospitals and elderly care homes will just be governed by the current health pass. Earlier, the French health minister said France has seen 208,000 cases in the last 24 hours. Every second more than two French people test positive, he noted. “Delta has not had its final word,” he said. The official said about the unvaccinated, there was “very little chance this time you’ll be able to slip through the net,” when it comes to getting infected. He said at least one million people were infected at this point. CNN readers from around the world have asked more than 150,000 questions (and counting) about coronavirus. One of those questions was if people who have previously had Covid-19 can still get infected with the Omicron variant. The answer is yes. In fact, the first confirmed Omicron-related death in the US was a man who previously had Covid-19. The Texas man, in his 50s, had not been vaccinated, Harris County health officials said. For months, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said vaccines give stronger protection against Covid-19 than previous infection alone. With the new Omicron variant, the risk of getting reinfected is 5.4 times higher with Omicron than it was with Delta, according to a team of disease modelers at Imperial College London. “This suggests relatively low remaining levels of immunity from prior infection,” the team wrote in a December report. Health experts say the best way to help protect against the Omicron variant is to get vaccinated and boosted. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN’s New Day Wednesday that the rapid speed of Omicron spread meant that early predictive estimates about how prevalent it is can be less stable. The CDC said Tuesday that the Omicron variant caused 58.6% of new coronavirus cases in the US last week, which is lower than previously thought, but the agency has said it will adjust its estimates based on additional sequencing. “But, I think the important thing to note here is that there are areas of this country that have 20% Omicron, there are areas of this country that have 90% of cases Omicron, and what we have seen and what our predictions have demonstrated is that this is a rapidly increasing variant in the United States,” she said. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated their isolation and quarantine guidelines on Monday for those who test positive with Covid-19.
