(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden said surging Covid-19 cases won’t be the “new normal,” though the virus is likely to endure and can be managed with newly developed tools.
“Covid — as we’re dealing with it now — is not here to stay,” Biden said to reporters at the White House on Friday. “Having Covid in the environment here and in the world is probably here to stay.”
The U.S. recorded a record one million cases on Monday, and hundreds of thousands each day since, including nearly 800,000 on Thursday, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The omicron variant is driving that surge. While indications are that cases are less likely to be serious or fatal, their sheer number is straining hospitals and health systems.
The president’s remarks came after several of his former health advisers published articles saying the strategy to fight the pandemic needs to be updated and that the virus would become the “new normal.”
Biden said the U.S. is growing testing capacity and treatments available to diagnose Covid and blunt its impact.
“We have so many more tools we’re developing, and continue to develop, that can contain Covid and other strains of Covid,” he said. “We’re going to be able to control this. The new normal is not going to be what it is now; it’s going to be better.”
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