PAM KEY National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he would not recommend the fully vaccinated go to restaurants during the Omicron surge of COVID.
Anchor Dana Bash asked, “How should vaccinated and boosted people behave? Can they go into a restaurant, eat safely indoors right now?”
Fauci said, “You know, when you’re having such a — I call it a tsunami of infections, Dana, we are seeing people who are vaccinated and boosted who are getting breakthrough infections. So when you’re in a situation where you have so many infections going out, the thing that you want to say is that, if you want to do things like that, better do them in a setting where you know the people around you are vaccinated and boosted.”
“That’s the reason why I’ve been saying when asked about the holiday season, the safest thing to do is to be in a home setting, friends, relatives who you know are vaccinated and boosted,” he continued. “If you want to go the extra step of safety, then get a quick antigen test, which will give you an extra degree of safety. What you want to avoid are places where you have 20, 30, 40, 50 people, many of whom you have no idea of whether or not they’re vaccinated or boosted. That’s more risky than the home setting.”
