Dr. Fauci’s senate hearing, new safety guidelines, amidst surging Covid-19 cases

On January 11, Dr. Anthony Fauci met with the Senate Health Committee. Amongst him were other notable leaders who are leading the fight against COVID-19, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Preparedness and Response assistant secretary.

The topic was the federal response to the rapidly growing COVID-19 cases across the nation. Also provided was information regarding vaccine and booster effectiveness, the need for convenient access to COVID testing, and the enforcement of child safety measures in schools.

Senator Paul directly accused Dr. Fauci of being responsible for the catastrophic effects of the pandemic by stating, “You are the one responsible. You are the architect. You are the lead architect for the response of the government, and now 800,000 people have died.”

Dr. Fauci responded by accusing Senator Paul of making disingenuous accusations about him spreading disinformation and influencing what Dr. Fauci referred to as “crazies” to harass him and his family, including death threats. On December 21, 2021, a man from California got arrested in Iowa for plotting to kill Dr. Fauci. He later provided a printed screenshot of Senator Rand Paul’s website that illustrated an image of Dr. Fauci that read “Fire Dr. Fauci.”, The website also allowed Senator Paul’s supporters to contribute “$5, $10, $20, $100” to the website. Various news outlets have reported on this contentious senate hearing, including CNN, C-SPAN, and NBC News.

The CDC listed the new regulations on its website that are in effect due to the Omicron variant of COVID-19. The regulations include:

• A negative COVID-19 test result of no more than one day before travel to the United States, regardless of COVID vaccination status or citizenship.
• If COVID-19 was contracted outside of the United States before entry/reentry into the U.S, documentation of recovery from COVID-19 provided by a licensed healthcare provider is necessary.
• Mask coverings over the nose and mouth are required to use all forms of public transportation, including on airlines.

The CDC also lists on their website the requirements of being fully vaccinated, which have been cited from the website and is listed below:

• 2 weeks (14 days) after your dose of an accepted single-dose vaccine
• 2 weeks (14 days) after your second dose of an accepted 2-dose series
• 2 weeks (14 days) after you received the full series of an accepted COVID-19 vaccine (not placebo) in a clinical trial
• 2 weeks (14 days) after you received 2 doses of any “mix-and-match” combination of accepted COVID-19 vaccines administered at least 17 days apart*

If you don’t meet these requirements, you are NOT fully vaccinated.

* CDC has not recommended the use of mix-and-match COVID-19 vaccine primary series. However, such strategies are increasingly common in many countries outside of the United States. Therefore, for the [of] purpose of interpreting vaccination records for travel to the United States, CDC will accept combinations of accepted COVID-19 vaccines.

President Biden is still supporting his plan against the COVID-19 pandemic to curb the infection and death rates caused by the virus. His COVID-19 plans are on the White House website.

The total reported cases for the 7-Day Moving Average in the week before January 14, 2022, was 587,723. The number of new admissions into hospitals for COVID-related reasons is 3,919,141, with a 7-Day Moving Average of 16,571 in the previous week. Deaths have risen to 842,873