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

A ban on Israeli citizens travelling to the United States is set to come into affect at 10pm on Tuesday, Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennet said on Sunday night, with eight other countries joining a “no fly” list.

It will mean travel from Israel to more than 50 countries is forbidden, and those returning from red-listed destinations will be required to quarantine upon returning.

It has been introduced amid concerns about Omicron, the new Covid variant, and rising infections in both countries. Eight other countries, including Canada, will also join Israel’s “no fly” list.

Israel’s health ministry meanwhile confirmed on Sunday night that a flight from Miami, Florida, had 10 per cent of passengers infected with Covid – 17 of which were Omicron.

The Biden administration is also set to announce the creation of new Covid testing sites around the United States on Tuesday.

The first testing sites will launch in New York City by Christmas, according to an official, after cases in the city surged by 60 per cent last week.

More than 1,000 US military doctors and nurses are also expected to be redeployed to overburdened hospitals, a senior administration official said, in scenes not dissimilar to the first months of the outbreak last year.

Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser has reinstated an indoor mask mandate and required government workers to get vaccinated, including a booster shot, amid a rise of Covid infections.

“I think we’re all tired of it,” MS Bowser told reporters. “I’m tired of it too, but we have to respond to what’s happening in our city and what’s happening in our nation.”

While that mandate will last January, DC has ordered more than a million rapid Covid test kits, Ms Bowser said on Monday, all of which will be available at eight locations around the city.

Many well known Brodway productions have announced cancellations until after Christmas because of concerns about Covid, with cases in New York City up 60 per cent.

Hamilton, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Hadestown have all canceled shows this week, citing rising breakthrough Covid cases among workers, and public health concerns. As has Aladdin.

One show, Jagged Little Pill, has said it will close for good and not reopen after Christmas – in what is another blow for New York City’s hospitality and entertainment sector.

Dr Dave Chokshi, the city’s health commissioner, said on Monday that while new Covid cases have “increased sharply,” vaccinations and boosters, as well as testing, would help build a “seawall” against the more infectious Omicron variant.

An unvaccinated man from Texas has become the first person in the US to die of Omicron.

The health department in Texas’s Harris County said that the man, believed to be in his 50s, was not vaccinated and had an underlying health condition.

Harris County judge Lina Hidalgo announced on Monday: “My phone was ringing, I’m sure you guys noticed, and it was our public health director telling me we just had our first Omicron-related death.”

The CDC, meanwhile, has said the Omicron variant accounted for 73.2 per cent of new Covid cases in the country over the past week, making it the new dominant variant of the virus, as Maroosha Muzaffar reported.

Fewer than 70 per cent of Americans are doubly vaccinated.

Donald Trump was booed by members of the crowd during the last leg of his “History Tour” at the weekend, after announcing that he has received the Covid-19 booster vaccine.

The former president was speaking on the final night of his tour of Florida and Texas with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly when he admitted to taking the booster, and was forced to defend himself.

Nor is it the first time, after he was booed in October for telling a rally crowd to take the Covid vaccine – and which his administration helped to fund.

He told the audience: “take credit for it [the vaccine] ...It’s great, what we’ve done is historic. Don’t let them take it away.”

Vice President Kamala Harris said the US was prepared for Omicron and an anticipated wave of infections across the country, which is already seeing a rise in admissions into hospitals.

On Monday night, Ms Harris was speaking with CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell when she added that “we have the power today” to control the outbreak through vaccinations.

“We have the power today. To go, and if you’ve not been boosted, get boosted. The power today, to go get vaccinated, and that will have an impact on where we end up tomorrow”.

The Omicron variant is more than 70 per cent dominant across the US, and more than 90 per cent dominant in parts of the Northeast, the Southeast and the Northwest, according to the CDC. These regions are where hospitalisations are on the rise.

The Biden administration is expected to deploy around 1,000 members of the US military to hospitals across the US from next month, as patients infected with both Delta and Omicron – the two man variants of Covid circulating in the US – cause a surge in hospital admissions.

It will include US military doctors, nurses, paramedics and other personnel, who will be deployed as needed in January and February, reports suggest. As will emergency response teams be sent to a handful of states in the north east, where cases have recently risen fastest - and where hospitals are showing signs of stress.

The White House is also readying supplies of ventilators and protective equipment, which will be sent to areas and hospitals in need. While Indiana, Michigan, Maine and New Hampshire have already received an additional 330 ventilators, it has been reported.

As a backstop, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will deploy hundreds of ambulances and paramedic teams so that if one hospital fills up, they can transport patients to open beds in other facilities, as The Associated Press reported on Tuesday.

Ambulances are already headed to New York and Maine, and paramedic teams are going to New Hampshire, Vermont and Arizona. 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki has reassured Americans that Joe Biden’s scheduled address to the nation on Tuesday will not be a speech about “locking the country down,” but rather to “make clear to people in the country what the risks are here of not being vaccinated”.

Mr Biden is expected to address a number of measure his administration will take “to ensure states and hospitals around the country have the personnel the beds and the supplies they need”, an official said.

It comes as the more infectious Omicron variant spreads through the US, with some states already burdened by hospitalisations from the previous Delta wave, as Andrew Feinberg writes:

While the United States as whole is unlikely to enter a lockdown because of Covid, some areas and states can be expected to see restrictions reimposed as health officials seek to control the spread of the Omicron variant.

In New York, where cases were up 60 per cent last week on the previous seven days, many have asked whether or not mayor Bill de Blasio will reintroduce a lockdown.

The outgoing mayor has, however, said his office would use “every tool we have” to stop the spread, and there is no sign of another lockdown in the city yet.