Biden makes 31st excursion to Delaware just after Omicron ruins Puerto Rican vacation options

WASHINGTON — President Biden returned to Delaware for the 31st time considering that getting workplace Monday as the surging Omicron variant of COVID-19 dashed his strategies for a submit-Xmas family vacation in Puerto Rico.

Biden will remain at his getaway household in Rehoboth Beach front with very first girl Jill Biden and new initially puppy Commander.

The president spent Xmas at the White Household with his extended relatives and had planned to stop by Puerto Rico in a twist on a loved ones tradition of celebrating New Year’s in the US Virgin Islands.

Biden usually spends the vacation on St. Croix or on Water Island off St. Thomas at a house owned by his brother, Jim Biden.

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus, nevertheless, plunged the country back again into disaster with record-significant new infections in New York City, DC and other parts of the place, despite the frustrating greater part of Americans getting vaccinated.

Whilst preliminary information from other countries suggests that signs and symptoms from the Omicron variant may perhaps be fewer critical, hospitalization prices are rising sharply in New York.

The new variant of COVID-19 was very first detected in late November in South Africa, prompting Biden to announce travel limits influencing eight countries in southern Africa when he was paying out a extended Thanksgiving weekend on Nantucket.

Biden has frequently expressed regret about not surging COVID-19 screening forward of Xmas, stating Monday morning that he’d have “gone harder, quicker” to distribute COVID-19 assessments if he’d identified the Omicron variant was going to trigger a surge of new bacterial infections.

But the president also denied a report that mentioned the White Property rejected the recommendations of a group of community overall health industry experts from Harvard, the Rockefeller Basis and other groups who at an Oct. 22 assembly urged administration officials to mass-distribute absolutely free fast exams to each household ahead of Christmas.

“We did not reject it,” Biden informed The Publish on the White Residence garden as he departed for Delaware.

Just one formal who participated in the assembly, on the other hand, confirmed to Vainness Good that the White Property did reject the strategy, saying, “We did not have ability to manufacture more than-the-counter tests at that scale.” Biden last week resolved to make 500 million at-home exams readily available for immediate get from the federal government, but the hold off implies the initiative will not start off until January — soon after the holiday getaway travel rush and massive spouse and children gatherings.