Covid: U.S. official warns unvaccinated to expect a winter of 'severe illness and death'

The Head of the White House’s Covid-19 Response Team has warned unvaccinated residents in the US to expect ‘a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves’ as the Omicron strain continues to spread across the country.

Speaking at a White House briefing, Jeff Zients said the hospitals ‘may soon overwhelm’.

"For the unvaccinated, you're looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families in the hospitals, you may soon overwhelm."

Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Rochelle Walensky confirmed the Omicron variant is “increasing rapidly” and is expected to become the dominant strain of coronavirus in the United States “in the coming weeks”, despite the Delta variant still circulating widely across the country.

It comes as new research suggests Omicron largely evades immunity from past coronavirus infection or two vaccine doses, and boosters are key to mitigating the impact of the variant.

The risk of reinfection with Omicron is 5.4 times greater than that of the Delta variant, according to researchers at Imperial College London.

This suggests the protection against reinfection by Omicron from past infection may be as low as 19%.

The study also found no evidence of Omicron having lower severity than Delta, but data on hospital admission was very low at the time of the study.

According to the data, boosters are vital in controlling Omicron, but they may lose some effectiveness over time.

Researchers estimated the proportion of Omicron among all Covid cases between November 29 and December 11 was doubling every two days up to December 11.

Omicron is now the predominant variant among new cases of coronavirus in England, new analysis suggests.

There is still considerable variation in the estimated levels of Omicron for different regions, however.

Some 54.2% of a sample of new coronavirus cases across England with specimen dates for December 14 and 15 were found to have S gene target failure (SGTF) – a way of detecting the likely presence of Omicron.