Fauci says omicron variant is `just raging around the world'

The White House's top medical adviser says the COVID-19 omicron variant is “just raging around the world."

WILMINGTON, Del. -- The COVID-19 omicron variant is “just raging around the world,” the White House's top medical adviser said Sunday, and President Joe Biden is planning to give “a stark warning of what the winter will look” for unvaccinated Americans.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the county's leading infectious disease expert, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “the real problem” for the U.S. hospital system is that “we have so many people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who have not yet been vaccinated.”

The prospect of a winter chilled by a wave of coronavirus infections is a severe reversal from the optimism projected by Biden some 10 months ago, when he suggested at a CNN town hall that the country would be back to normal by this Christmas. Biden has been careful not to overpromise, yet confidence in the country has been battered by an unrelenting wave of COVID-19 mutations and variations that have left many Americans emotionally exhausted, dispirited and worried about infections.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, tried to defend the president's earlier promise in a separate interview Sunday on CNN's “State of the Union.”