Fauci: Large holiday gatherings are unsafe, even with COVID booster

NIAID director Anthony Fauci warned Wednesday that large gatherings this holiday season are unsafe even for fully vaccinated people who've had a COVID-19 booster shot, as the Omicron variant surges across the U.S.

What he's saying: "There are many of these parties that have 30, 40, 50 people in which you do not know the vaccination status of individuals," Fauci said at a briefing. "Those are the kind of functions in the context of Omicron that you do not want to go to."

Fully vaccinated families should be safe to attend smaller gatherings, Fauci said.

What to watch: Fauci noted that early research from the U.K. and South Africa indicates that Omicron may be less severe than other variants.

But he added: "We must wait to see what happens in our own population, which has its own demographic considerations."