Omicron news US - live: Biden to address nation and deploys military as US has first-known death from variant

Welcome to The Independent’s live blog covering the Covid-19 pandemic for Tuesday 21 December.

President Joe Biden has come in close contact with a White House staffer who later tested positive for Covid-19, the White House says.

Mr Biden, 79, tested negative for the infection on Monday and will be continuing with his routine daily schedule. He will not be required to quarantine after the exposure, as under current CDC guidelines fully vaccinated individuals do not have to isolate themselves, said press secretary Jen Psaki.

On Friday, the aide, described by Ms Psaki as a “mid-level staffer” spent about 30 minutes near the president on Air Force One, while on the way from South Carolina to Philadelphia.

The aide, also fully vaccinated and boosted, started experiencing Covid-19 symptoms on Sunday and his results came back positive on Monday.

President Joe Biden intends to stress the importance of getting inoculated against Covid-19 infection in his address to the nation today, as cases in the country surge in the days before Christmas.

Giving a preview of his speech, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the president would not be announcing the imposition of any lockdowns in his speech scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

“This is not a speech about locking the country down. This is a speech about the benefits of being vaccinated,” said Ms Psaki.

Omicron accounted for 73 per cent of new infections last week, and is now the dominant variant in the US, said the federal health officials.

Since the end of June, the Delta variant was the most dominant variant, responsible for about 99.5 per cent of Covid-19 cases until November, according to the CDC data.

The new variant has now accounted for about 90 per cent of infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest and the Pacific Northwest, reported the Associated Press.

Dr Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, said the new numbers reflect the kind of growth seen in other countries. “These numbers are stark, but they’re not surprising,” she said.

Los Angeles has called off its New Year’s Eve celebration, while Rhode Island reinstated an indoor mask mandate as the Omicron variant emerged as the dominant variant in the US.

The organisers on Monday said that the planned New Year’s Eve party at Los Angeles’s Grand Park will no longer have an in-person audience.

The event will instead be streamed online. While in Rhode Island, under the new mandate which came into effect on Monday, most indoor establishments now require either a proof vaccination or masks for all.

The US might ease the travel restrictions it imposed on eight African countries last month, according to the country’s top infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci.

“We likely are going to pull back on that pretty soon because we have enough infection in our own country,” Dr Fauci said at the National Press Club.

“We’re letting in people from other countries that have as much or more infection than the Southern African countries. So likely we are going to look at that very carefully to see if we can pull back.”

In November, the Biden administration had barred foreign nationals if they had been to one of the eight listed southern African countries, including South Africa, within 14 days of their scheduled travel to the US.

Moderna could soon be working to develop a booster shot against the Omicron variant, said the company’s top executive Stephane Bancel.

“It only needs minor adjustments for Omicron. I don’t expect any problems,” Mr Bancel said in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger published on Tuesday. The company is awaiting important information on the variant, to begin their work.

“That will take another week or two,” Mr Bancel said. “It will take a few months before we can produce 500 million doses after (regulatory) approval. But our capacities are much higher today than a year ago,” he said.

Iran’s envoy to Yemen’s rebel Houthi movement, died of coronavirus infection days after he was repatriated from the country, said Iran’s foreign ministry.

The ambassador Hasan Irlu "was evacuated in poor condition due to delayed cooperation from certain countries," said spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh, without naming the countries.

He seemingly referred to Saudi Arabia, which along with Iraq was involved in his transfer from Yemen’s capital Sanna, reported Reuters, citing a Houthi spokesperson.

Christmas gatherings with lots of people should be “changed or delayed” to slow down the spread of coronavirus cases, a WHO spokesperson has urged.

Dr Margaret Harris said people planning on attending large Christmas gatherings should consider cancelling their plans, if a lot of people were travelling from a number of different places.

“If you have gatherings that are not going to be safe, change them, delay them, do them later - don’t do them now,” Dr Harris told Sky News.

The Biden administration is to announce the purchase of 500 million at-home rapid Covid tests to make available to all Americans for free in January, an official has said.

The tests will be available to order online, and according to reports, delivered by mail. Although it remains unclear how many Covid tests each household will be able to request in January.

It comes after White House press secretary Jen Psaki was forced to defend a plan to allow Americans to file reimbursement claims for at-home Covid tests, rather than making them freely available to all Americans without any upfront costs, as Alex Woodward reported: