CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen said Wednesday on CNN’s “Newsroom” that President Joe Biden should “go further” in placing restrictions on Americans who have not gotten COVID vaccines.
Wen said, “I think what we will see with Omicron is a very large number of infections due to Covid-19.”
She continued, “The question, though, is, are we going to see a decoupling of infections with hospitalizations and death? That would be ideal, the entire point of vaccination, the main point of vaccination, I should say, is to reduce severe illness. And so, if we’re able to avoid overwhelming our health care systems, that would be the goal. Is there going to be a lot of people who get Omicron? Absolutely. But the hope is that enough people have been vaccinated in some parts of the country and many parts of the world that we’re going to prevent the worst of it.”
Wen added, “I do have a lot of concern about what happens to parts of this country, for example, that have very low vaccination rates. This is another reason why I think President Biden’s message yesterday was the right one in some way — in saying vaccinated people should move on with their lives with precautions. But I wish that he would go further to restrict the activities of the unvaccinated because they are the ones who are still spreading COVID and prolonging the pandemic for all of us.”
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