US sees long queues in vaccination centres following Omicron scare: Report

Omicron cases rising across the United States led to queues across vaccination centres across several states, news agency the New York Times reported. The nation has witnessed several debates about vaccines and inoculation mandates, with a section of people questioning the need for vaccines altogether.

The report pointed out that the demand for vaccines grew from an average of under-a-million doses a day to an average of 1.5 million a day in recent weeks, citing data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The report also highlighted that many among those queuing across vaccination centres are there for their first dose.

“What the public needs to keep in mind is that we’ve got a stressed and strained healthcare delivery system,” Mitchel Rothholz, the head of immunisation policy at the American Pharmacists Association told the NYT.

The Biden administration is planning to create hundreds of family-vaccination clinics, one-stop shops for first shots and boosters. The CDC also recommended booster shots in order to ensure that people in the US remain protected against Omicron and Delta variants.

The US pandemic advisor Anthony Fauci on Sunday said that early indications regarding the severity of the Omicron Covid-19 are ‘encouraging’. “Omicron has a transmission advantage. Though it's too early to really make any definitive statements about it, thus far, it does not look like there's a great degree of severity to it. Thus far, the signals are a bit encouraging,” Fauci said while speaking to CNN.

However, Moderna’s president Stephen Hoge told news agencies that there was concern regarding the effectiveness of the vaccine. “I think that there's a real risk that we're going to see a decrease in effectiveness of the vaccines. What I don't know is how substantial that is,” Hoge said.

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