Coronavirus Live Updates: Omicron variant detected in 17 US states and cases increasing

“While it’s too early to make any definitive statements about it, so far, it does not appear that there is a high degree of seriousness about it,” Fauci told CNN’s State of the Union, expressing confidence in that existing vaccines will provide “a certain degree, and perhaps a significant degree, of protection against the omicron variant, if it actually begins to establish itself in a dominant way in this country.”