December 29 coronavirus pandemic and Omicron variant news

Omicron variant cases are doubling every two to three days, French Health Minister Olivier Veran told a parliamentary health commission in Paris Wednesday.

Veran also told French lawmakers that his European colleagues are also seeing a similar trend.

To curb the spread of Omicron, the French government will require a vaccine pass that will to come into force from Jan. 15 in restaurants as well as in some of the country’s public transportation and proof of vaccination will be required.

Hospitals and elderly care homes will just be governed by the current health pass.

Earlier, the French health minister said France has seen 208,000 cases in the last 24 hours. Every second more than two French people test positive, he noted.

“Delta has not had its final word,” he said.

The official said about the unvaccinated, there was “very little chance this time you’ll be able to slip through the net,” when it comes to getting infected.

He said at least one million people were infected at this point.

CNN readers from around the world have asked more than 150,000 questions (and counting) about coronavirus. One of those questions was if people who have previously had Covid-19 can still get infected with the Omicron variant. The answer is yes.

In fact, the first confirmed Omicron-related death in the US was a man who previously had Covid-19.

The Texas man, in his 50s, had not been vaccinated, Harris County health officials said.

For months, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said vaccines give stronger protection against Covid-19 than previous infection alone.

With the new Omicron variant, the risk of getting reinfected is 5.4 times higher with Omicron than it was with Delta, according to a team of disease modelers at Imperial College London.

“This suggests relatively low remaining levels of immunity from prior infection,” the team wrote in a December report.

Health experts say the best way to help protect against the Omicron variant is to get vaccinated and boosted.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN’s New Day Wednesday that the rapid speed of Omicron spread meant that early predictive estimates about how prevalent it is can be less stable.

The CDC said Tuesday that the Omicron variant caused 58.6% of new coronavirus cases in the US last week, which is lower than previously thought, but the agency has said it will adjust its estimates based on additional sequencing.

“But, I think the important thing to note here is that there are areas of this country that have 20% Omicron, there are areas of this country that have 90% of cases Omicron, and what we have seen and what our predictions have demonstrated is that this is a rapidly increasing variant in the United States,” she said.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated their isolation and quarantine guidelines on Monday for those who test positive with Covid-19.

Here's what to know:

The update did not explicitly say how long infected people who still had symptoms need to isolate. The CDC has previously said people with symptomatic Covid-19 should isolate for 10 days.

“To calculate your 10 full day isolation period, day 0 is your first day of symptoms,” the CDC said Dec. 9. “Day 1 is the first full day after your symptoms developed.”

The decision to reduce isolation times for those who are asymptomatic after five days was motivated by research showing the majority of Covid-19 spread “occurs early in the course of illness, generally in the 1-2 days prior to onset of symptoms and the 2-3 days after,” the CDC said on Dec. 27.

“Therefore, people who test positive should isolate for 5 days and, if asymptomatic at that time, they may leave isolation if they can continue to mask for 5 days to minimize the risk of infecting others.”

Have more coronavirus questions? We're answering them here.

The US hit a seven-day average of 265,427 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, blowing past the country's previous record of about 252,000 daily cases, reported nearly a year ago on Jan. 11.

The new peak, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, comes as rapid acceleration of infections continues in the United States.

Here's a look at how Covid-19 is spreading in communities across the country:

Track Covid-19 cases in the US here.

CNN's Holly Yan and Amir Vera contributed reporting to this post. 

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky explained the agency's stance on rapid tests on CNN’s New Day Wednesday. Walensky said the CDC does not recommend rapid tests for ending Covid-19 isolation because they don’t know how they perform or predict how transmissible people are at the end of infection. 

The US Food and Drug Administration has not authorized them for that use, she said, and it is not known how they perform. 

“So what we said was, well, if you got a rapid test at five days and it was negative, we weren’t convinced that you weren’t still transmissible,” she said. “We didn’t want to leave a false sense of security, we still wanted you to wear the mask. And if it was positive, we still know the maximum amount of transmission was behind you, we still wanted you to wear a mask and given that we were not going to change our recommendations based on the result of that rapid test, we opted not to include it.” 

Asked why health care workers need a negative test just a few days ago, according to CDC guidance, but the general public doesn’t, Walensky said that infection control recommendations in health care workplaces are “always more stringent” than for the general population. 

She also said that the decision had nothing to do with shortages of rapid tests, saying “this decision really from an isolation standpoint had everything to do with the fact that we wouldn’t change our guidance based on the result of that rapid test. And you know that it didn’t have anything to do with any shortage at all, because we recommend rapid tests for those in quarantine.” 

You can read more about the CDC's updated isolation guidelines here.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on CNN’s New Day Wednesday that she hopes for coronavirus vaccine boosters for 12- to 15-years-olds in the days to weeks ahead, but vaccines for children younger than 5 will take longer.

“The FDA is currently looking at the issue of booster shots for those 12 to 15, and I know that the companies and manufacturers are working towards data for children under five. That will not be in the month ahead, but we’re working hard to get there soon,” she said.

Asked about the timeline for boosters for younger people, Walensky said “the FDA is looking at that right now. Of course, the CDC will swiftly follow as soon as we hear from them and I’m hoping to have that in, you know, the days to weeks ahead.” 

After the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance this week that shortens its recommended isolation period from 10 to five days for people who have tested positive for Covid-19 but don't have symptoms, experts are split.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky defended the changes, saying she is "seeing and expecting even more cases of this Omicron variant" and that was a factor in the agency's decision-making.

The CDC also looked at the data around transmission, Walensky added.

"We know that the most amount of transmission occurs in the one to two days before you develop symptoms, those two to three days after you develop symptoms. If you map that out, those five days account for somewhere between 85% to 90% of all transmission that occurs. We really wanted to make sure that ... the first five days were spent in isolation," she said. "Of course there is this tail end period of time in the last five days where we are asking you to mask."

Watch:

The decision of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to shorten recommended times for people to isolate after testing positive for Covid-19 has raised eyebrows.

Erin Bromage, professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, said he was concerned about isolation periods being cut from 10 days to five if a Covid-19 positive person does not have symptoms. Speaking to New Day, Bromage said there was no data to support it.

The new CDC guidance does not require a negative test at the end of the isolation period, a move which Bromage said seems to be born from the "fact that it's really hard to get your hands on tests."

"I can tell you with people that work in very, very close proximity to each other, where masks are not worn regularly because of the job function when ... you're returning them to work after being infected and after sickness, the people that are working around them want to know that they're not going to get infected by that person," he said.

The lack of a testing requirement "just seems to be adding risk and anxiety that we don't really need,” he said.