Planning A Large Holiday Gathering This Year? Fauci Says Just Don’t Do It

The nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned all Americans about large holiday gatherings just days before Christmas as the Omicron variant now makes up at least 73% of all COVID-19 cases across the country.

Fauci gave the urgent warning for both unvaccinated and fully vaccinated people with booster shots to “stay away from large gatherings," saying it was not safe during the White House coronavirus briefing on Wednesday. He defined a large holiday gathering as 30 or more people.

"There are many of these parties that have 30, 40, 50 people in which you do not know the vaccination status of individuals. Those are the kind of functions in the context of Omicron that you do not want to go to," Fauci said.

While Fauci said large gatherings were “higher risk,” he maintained that fully vaccinated individuals who had received their booster shots would be safe at smaller family gatherings.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 204.8 million Americans have been fully vaccinated, with 63.1 million people receiving booster doses.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said on Wednesday that the U.S.’ seven-day average COVID case count increased 25% from a week earlier to about 149,300 cases per day. Average daily deaths were up 3.5% to 1,200 a day and the average hospital admissions were about 7,800 per day, she said.

More than 812,000 Americans have died from COVID-19-related deaths since the pandemic began in 2020, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.