In a recent article in Politico, Adam Cancryn and Christopher Cadelago write that with the Omicron variant spreading in the US and around the country like a fire, the White House is reportedly racing to limit the fallout from record cases swamping the nation.

To limit the widespread economic disruptions, the administration is reportedly fast-tracking Covid treatments only to hard-hit areas, dispatching “emergency personnel to medical centers shorthanded by the waves of infection sweeping through their staffs”.

“In interviews, officials described the next few weeks as a triage operation focused on containing the reverberations of the surge well enough to avert breakdowns in essential services, mass school closures and overrun hospitals.”

Source: Politico

Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota and who also advises the White House, is quoted “We’re going to have another two-and-a-half, three weeks, maybe four weeks of this viral blizzard where we’ll see one challenge after another. There’s nothing at the federal level that’s going to change that.”

Health experts are reportedly are publicly calm fears “while ramping up efforts to vaccinate more people and limiting the potential for catastrophic health and economic damage,” writes the Politico.

Politico, quoting a person familiar with the approach, writes: “The message is to get vaccinated, to get boosted and many of us have done so. But folks who are not susceptible to that call, they’re going to remain resistant to it.”

• White House embraces a manage-not-contain Omicron game plan
• A National Strategy for the “New Normal” of Life With COVID
• Former Biden health advisers say the US needs to change its Covid-19 strategy to face a ‘new normal’

In an OpEd titled A National Strategy for the “New Normal” of Life With COVID on JAMA Network, leading heath experts Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Michael Osterholm and Celine R. Gounder write “national strategy needs to be updated. Policy makers need to specify the goals and strategies for the ‘new normal‘ of life with COVID-19 and communicate them clearly to the public.”

“The “new normal” requires recognizing that SARS-CoV-2 is but one of several circulating respiratory viruses that include influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and more. COVID-19 must now be considered among the risks posed by all respiratory viral illnesses combined. Many of the measures to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (eg, ventilation) will also reduce transmission of other respiratory viruses. Thus, policy makers should retire previous public health categorizations, including deaths from pneumonia and influenza or pneumonia, influenza, and COVID-19, and focus on a new category: the aggregate risk of all respiratory virus infections,” they write.