Six former health advisers for the United States President Joe Biden urged the government to use a different approach to fight the deadly Coronavirus pandemic. The advisers wrote three articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association to encourage Americans to learn to live with the COVID-19 in a new standard way instead of eliminating the virus.

Dr. Celine Gounder, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, and Michael Osterholm, all of them, served on the transition Coronavirus advisory board of the president in 2020, and they wrote in one of the articles that without a strategic plan for the new everyday life with widespread Coronavirus, more individuals in the United States would unnecessarily experience illness and mortality, health discriminations will increase, and trillions of dollars will be lost from the American economy.

Six former health advisers for the United States President Joe Biden are urging Americans for a different approach to fight the deadly Coronavirus pandemic. They asked the government to build modern data infrastructure and better access to rapid and cheap testing. pic.twitter.com/5fKjP2bOi3

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Former Advisers Called for Building a Modern Data Infrastructure

The former Biden health officials called to develop a modern Coronavirus data infrastructure and build more public health workers, including school nurses. Further, they wrote that two years into the deadly pandemic, the country is still heavily dependent on statistics from the United Kingdom and Israel for evaluating the effectiveness and durability of Coronavirus vaccines and the rate of vaccine breakthrough infections.

Those health officials called for better access to quick and cheap testing and more monitoring of wastewater and air to get ahead of possible outbreaks. In addition, they called for vaccine mandates and the making of variant-specific COVID-19 vaccines. Likewise, they called for a rebuilding of trust in the public health institutions of the country, calling the preliminary response to the outbreak seriously flawed.

Booster Dose Eligibility

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded Coronavirus booster dose eligibility for some adolescents to fight the highly contagious Omicron variant. Moreover, the move came as the agency faced criticism over spreading confusion on coping with new infections. In a Wednesday statement, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC Director, urged adolescents ages 12 to 15 to get Coronavirus boosters as early as they are eligible.

Previously, the health advisers encouraged the Americans for a booster dose sixteen and older. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is the sole option for kids in the United States. Furthermore, the CDC forecasts that slightly over half of twelve to seventeen-year-old children- around 13.5 million individuals – received two Pfizer doses. In December, the health officials initially approved boosters for 16- and 17-year-old December.

The recent CDC decision made around five million younger adolescents who received their last doses in 2021 instantly eligible for booster shots. Walensky stated that the booster shot would provide optimized protection against the Coronavirus, especially the Omicron variant. He also encouraged all the parents to keep their kids up to date with the Coronavirus vaccine recommendations from the CDC. Although kids tend not to become as seriously ill from Coronavirus as adults, the omicron variant is steering hospitalizations among children, mainly unvaccinated.

Omicron Variant Should not be Called Mild – WHO

The World Health Organization warned against describing the Omicron strain as mild, saying it kills people worldwide. The latest studies suggest that the variant is likely to make people seriously ill than past Coronavirus variants. However, the record number of individuals catching it has left global health systems under severe pressure, according to the statement of WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

On Monday, the United States recorded over one million Coronavirus cases in twenty-four hours. The World Health Organization said the number of international virus cases surged by seventy-one percent in the last week and the Americas by a hundred percent. Further, it added that ninety percent didn’t receive the vaccination shots among severe worldwide cases.

On Thursday, Tedros told a news conference that Omicron appears to be less severe than Delta, especially in those vaccinated against the virus. However, it doesn’t mean it should be categorized as mild. Like previous virus strains, Omicron is hospitalizing individuals and killing people. In addition, the Omicron is highly transmissible and can infect individuals even if they receive total doses of the vaccine.

Last year, the World Health Organization director said that the world would have enough shots of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2022 to vaccinate the entire adult population of the world – if Western nations don’t hoard vaccines to use in booster programs. Coronavirus infected millions of people in the United States and killed over eight hundred thousand.

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