The White House on Sunday promised to quickly resolve the Covid-19 test shortage that the United States is facing amid the growing concerns over rise of Omicron Covid variant cases and the increase in children's hospitalization. as reported by New York health officials. The New York State Department of Health on Friday warned about an upward trend in pediatric hospitalizations related to Covid-19. Top US pandemic advisor Anthony Fauci also acknowledged that there was a Covid 'testing problem' and said that the issue will be resolved by next month. He also highlighted that the administration was ramping up to tackle the threats imposed by the rising Covid cases. The US has also recorded a rise in the number of Covid-19 infections on a daily basis as it registered an average of nearly 190,000 new cases daily over the past seven days, according to the data released by Johns Hopkins University.
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Key Points:
1. "Identified four-fold increases in Covid-19 hospital admissions for children 18 and under beginning the week of December 5 through the current week," said the department of health.
2. The health department's data also revealed that around half of the hospitalized children are younger than five and this age group is also ineligible for vaccines currently.
3. Talking about the Covid 'testing problem', Fauci said: "One of the problems is that that's not going to be totally available to everyone until we get to January and there are still some issues now of people having trouble getting tested," "But we're addressing the testing problem and it will be resolved very soon," he told ABC News. However, the White House has faced strong criticism as the tests won't be available until January.
4. Fauci highlighted that the administration is working towards tackling the increase in cases and underlined that the new Omicron Covid variant is 'extraordinarily contagious'.
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5. He also noted that studies indicated that the Omicron Covid variant is less likely to lead to hospitalization in comparison to previous Covid variants. However, Fauci has also warned that the new variant is extraordinarily contagious. He further said that Omicron's lower severity is likely to be neutralized by how fast it is spreading. "The issue that we don't want to get complacent about... is that when you have such a high volume of new infections, it might override a real diminution in severity," Fauci said.
