Wall Street buckled under the strain of omicron as President Biden met with advisers to retool his strategy for beating back a winter surge in COVID-19 that is accelerating rapidly and draining the cheer out of the week before Christmas.
The highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus made up 73% of new cases last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday, an almost six-fold increase in one week.
Mr. Biden is expected to warn Americans Tuesday that cases will flourish in the coming days while insisting that Americans can choose between avoiding severe disease through immunization or rolling the dice by remaining unvaccinated.
“You are 14 times more likely to die of COVID if you have not been vaccinated versus vaccinated,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. “For those who choose to remain unvaccinated, he’ll issue a stark warning and make clear unvaccinated individuals will continue to drive hospitalizations and deaths.”
She said the speech will touch on efforts to expand testing — demand is sky-high around the holidays — and other efforts to thwart omicron, a fast-moving variant that has been found in most U.S. states and 90 countries.
Five days before Christmas, the virus seemed to be everywhere.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan joined Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey on the roster of politicians who have tested positive and fallen ill in recent days despite being vaccinated and boosted.
They reported mild symptoms, though fear of omicron spread as swiftly as the pathogen itself, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average slumping 430 points, or 1.2%, and the World Economic Forum postponing its elite gathering in Davos, Switzerland, from mid-January to the summer.
Tennis star Rafael Nadal tested positive, putting his Australian Open hopes in doubt, and a cruise ship returned to Miami with nearly 50 cases reported on board.
Across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Monday he was “looking at all kinds of things to keep omicron under control” and German leaders planned to consider new restrictions Tuesday.
America’s state and local leaders rolled out new efforts ahead of Mr. Biden’s speech but stopped short of the lockdowns being considered or enforced in Europe.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser reimposed the mask mandate she had lifted in late November, while New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would add roughly two dozen testing sites in an attempt to weather the omicron wave through diagnostics, vaccination and management of hospital space.
“The more people who are vaccinated, the more people get the boosters. The better off our hospitals will be as well,” said Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat who will leave office Jan. 1. “We should avoid shutdowns. We should avoid restrictions. I’ve said this now for weeks and weeks, we can avoid all those things by getting more people vaccinated.”
Drugmaker Moderna said Monday its COVID-19 booster shot increased antibody levels against omicron in lab studies, providing what it called “reassuring” protection against the variant.
Moderna said the half-dose booster of 50 micrograms increased antibody levels by 37-fold and a full dose of 100 micrograms increased antibodies by 83-fold.
The company’s booster is approved at the half dose level, but Moderna plans to discuss the best way forward with regulators.
The White House is leaning on that type of data as part of a scramble to bolster defenses against severe disease while acknowledging that some share of vaccinated persons will get infected.
Earlier rhetoric about “crushing” the virus has slowly given way to efforts to limit it and avoid severe outcomes.
“We do expect there to be breakthrough cases, including in the federal government,” Ms. Psaki said.
The U.S. is averaging more than 130,000 reported infections per day. It is the most since September, when the delta wave swamped southern states.
Roughly 69,000 Americans are hospitalized with the disease, up 16% from two weeks ago, although far below the 120,000 seen on this date a year ago, giving leaders hope the omicron will not lead to the devastating woe the country saw last January.
“We are now in a very different place than we were a year ago, 200 million Americans vaccinated now,” Ms. Psaki said.
But Ms. Psaki did not signal wholesale changes to guidance ahead of the president’s speech. For instance, the administration is resisting calls to update the definition of “fully vaccinated” to include booster shots, even as government scientists say they’re necessary.
The vaccine push got an unexpected boost from former President Donald Trump, who revealed Sunday that he received an extra dose and scolded members of a Dallas crowd who booed the revelation.
“We saved tens of millions worldwide by creating the vaccine,” Mr. Trump said during an event with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. “We should take credit for it, and you play right into their hands.”
Mr. Trump got his initial vaccine series in January at the White House, though he didn’t do it publicly.
It was not clear when he got his booster, though the confirmation was notable. Pollsters have found that Republicans are less likely to report being vaccinated for COVID-19 than Democrats.
The current White House hasn’t given much credit to Mr. Trump for his work to develop COVID-19 vaccines in record time. At the same time, Biden officials have said they were surprised by the amount of GOP resistance to the vaccines given the amount of work done under the previous administration.
Ian Sams, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, welcomed Mr. Trump’s comments.
“Be like President Trump, and get your booster shot,” he tweeted.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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