Biden Covid adviser warns those who spent Thanksgiving with family & friends ‘will be in ICUs over Christmas & New Year’

ONE of Joe Biden’s Covid-19 advisors said people who celebrated Thanksgiving with family and friends will be “in ICUs over Christmas and New Year.”

Dr Celine Gounder, who’s on Biden‘s coronavirus advisory board, made the stark prediction as hospitalizations in the USA reached a record-high level of 93,238 on Sunday.

Gounder told CBS News: “We fully expect that in about a week or two after Thanksgiving we will see an increase in cases first.

“Then, about a week or two later, you’ll start to see an increase in hospitalizations, and then another week or two after that you’ll start to see deaths.

“Unfortunately, that means that many people who celebrated with family, with friends over Thanksgiving will find themselves in the hospital, in ICUs over Christmas and New Years.”

Her comments come as admissions surge after millions of Americans traveled to be with loved ones this week in spite of the CDC guidelines to stay home and celebrate virtually.

The Covid Tracking Project noted this evening that hospitalizations were skyrocketing in three regions as the number of hospitalized patients in California doubled from 4,000 on November 12 to more than 8,000 today.

There were 155,596 new cases and 1,189 deaths reported yesterday which upped infections to 13.4 million and Covid-19 fatalities to 266,594 by Sunday afternoon.

Despite warnings from health experts not to travel or gather, the day before Thanksgiving, the TSA reported more than 1.07 million people passed through US airports.

In the week leading up to the national holiday, nearly six million Americans flew to celebrate with family and friends, flouting the health advice.

In the days before Thanksgiving, 30 states had record daily new cases while 16 others reported record seven-day averages for new cases on Thursday and Friday.

These included: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington and West Virginia. 

Dr Leana Wen also deaths could double to 4,000 within 10 days after the Thanksgiving surge.

Her disturbing prediction came after Dr Anthony Fauci said an uptick was likely in December “if the surge takes a turn of continuing to go up.”

The visiting professor at George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health echoed Fauci’s fears of another holiday spike, saying “we cannot let our guard down.”

“If anything, we are rounding the corner into a calamity. We’re soon going to exceed well more than 2,000 deaths, maybe 3,000, 4,000 deaths every single day here in the US,” Wen told CNN.

Her comments on Black Friday came as the country topped 13 million infections with 205,000 new cases, marking the 25th day in a row with more than 100,000 new cases in the USA.

Meanwhile, Dr Anthony Fauci on Sunday forecasted that it will be “months” before children can get the coronavirus vaccine because it must first be tested for safety and effectiveness among adults. 

The nation’s top infectious disease expert shared his assessment in a more than 15-minute-long interview with NBC anchor Chuck Todd on Meet the Press.

Todd pointed out that the biotech company Moderna did not do clinical trials on people under age 18, while another vaccine maker, Pfizer, went down to age 12 but no younger in its trials. 

“It’s going to be months [before children will be vaccinated,” Fauci replied. “Traditionally when you have a situation like a new vaccine, you want to make sure, because children as well as pregnant women, are vulnerable.”