By JOSH BOAK | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — As coro­n­avirus cas­es surge in the days be­fore Christ­mas, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden plans to stress in a speech the im­por­tance of get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed to pro­tect from the wave of in­fec­tions tied to the new omi­cron vari­ant.

The world is con­fronting the prospect of a sec­ond straight hol­i­day sea­son with COVID-19 as fam­i­lies and friends be­gin to gath­er while the vari­ant quick­ly spreads. Sci­en­tists don’t yet know whether omi­cron caus­es more se­ri­ous dis­ease, but they do know that vac­ci­na­tion should of­fer strong pro­tec­tions against se­vere ill­ness and death.

In a pre­view of Biden’s speech Tues­day af­ter­noon, White House press sec­re­tary Jen Psa­ki said at Mon­day’s press brief­ing that the pres­i­dent doesn’t plan to im­pose any lock­downs and will in­stead be en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to get in­oc­u­lat­ed — and, if they’re el­i­gi­ble, to get their boost­er shot.

“This is not a speech about lock­ing the coun­try down. This is a speech about the ben­e­fits of be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed,” Psa­ki told re­porters.

Biden’s top med­ical ad­vis­er, Dr. An­tho­ny Fau­ci, said over the week­end that Biden will is­sue “a stark warn­ing of what the win­ter will look like” for un­vac­ci­nat­ed Amer­i­cans.

Biden has found him­self in the del­i­cate po­si­tion of both alert­ing the coun­try to the dan­gers posed by omi­cron and re­as­sur­ing Amer­i­cans that the vac­cines will pro­tect them. White House of­fi­cials are look­ing to ease the na­tion back to­ward ac­cept­ing the re­al­i­ty of an en­dem­ic virus with far low­er stakes for the vac­ci­nat­ed. This has meant set­ting a dif­fi­cult bal­ance as cas­es rise and as deaths and se­ri­ous ill­ness among the un­vac­ci­nat­ed dom­i­nate head­lines.

Un­der­scor­ing how wide­spread the virus is, the White House said late Mon­day that Biden had been in close con­tact with a staff mem­ber who lat­er test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. The staffer spent about 30 min­utes around the pres­i­dent on Air Force One on Fri­day on a trip from Or­ange, South Car­oli­na, to Philadel­phia. The staffer, who was ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and boost­ed, test­ed pos­i­tive ear­li­er Mon­day, Psa­ki said.

Psa­ki said Biden has test­ed neg­a­tive twice since Sun­day and will test again on Wednes­day. Cit­ing guid­ance from the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, Psa­ki said Biden didn’t need to quar­an­tine and would con­tin­ue with his reg­u­lar sched­ule.

There are 40 mil­lion el­i­gi­ble but un­vac­ci­nat­ed Amer­i­can adults. Ef­forts to in­crease vac­ci­na­tion rates have strug­gled to over­come a se­ries of po­lit­i­cal, so­cial and cul­tur­al di­vides. Psa­ki said the pres­i­dent plans to ap­peal to sur­vival in­stincts.

“Our health ex­perts as­sess that you are 14 times more like­ly to die of COVID if you have not been vac­ci­nat­ed ver­sus vac­ci­nat­ed,” she said Mon­day.

Leana Wen, the for­mer pub­lic health com­mis­sion­er for Bal­ti­more, said she would like to hear Biden com­mit in his speech to hav­ing enough tests avail­able with­in three months so that every fam­i­ly can test twice a week. Oth­er coun­tries have al­ready done this, she not­ed.

“Every fam­i­ly test­ing twice a week is the goal that we should get to,” Wen said in an in­ter­view.

Wen, who teach­es pub­lic health at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, said she’d al­so like to see more re­stric­tions put in place on the still-siz­able por­tion of the pub­lic that re­mains un­vac­ci­nat­ed, such as fol­low­ing some cities and re­quir­ing proof of vac­ci­na­tion to be ad­mit­ted to bars, restau­rants, con­cert venues and gyms, for ex­am­ple.

Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing Biden’s mes­sage is un­cer­tain­ty about the omi­cron vari­ant.

Sci­en­tists say omi­cron spreads even eas­i­er than oth­er coro­n­avirus strains, in­clud­ing delta. It has al­ready be­come the dom­i­nant strain in the U.S., ac­count­ing for near­ly three-quar­ters of new in­fec­tions last week.

Ear­ly stud­ies sug­gest that the vac­ci­nat­ed will need a boost­er shot for the best chance at pre­vent­ing an omi­cron in­fec­tion but that even with­out the ex­tra dose, vac­ci­na­tion should still large­ly pro­tect peo­ple from se­ri­ous sick­ness or death.

In New York City, near­ly 42,600 peo­ple city­wide test­ed pos­i­tive from Wednes­day through Sat­ur­day — com­pared to few­er than 35,800 in the en­tire month of No­vem­ber. The city has nev­er had so many peo­ple test pos­i­tive in such a short pe­ri­od of time since test­ing be­came wide­ly avail­able; there’s no clear pic­ture of how many peo­ple got the virus dur­ing the city’s first surge in the spring of 2020.

The lat­est out­break re­flects the glob­al chal­lenges of stop­ping the pan­dem­ic.

British Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son said of­fi­cials have de­cid­ed against im­pos­ing fur­ther re­stric­tions, at least for now.

“We will have to re­serve the pos­si­bil­i­ty of tak­ing fur­ther ac­tion to pro­tect the pub­lic,” John­son said Mon­day. “The ar­gu­ments ei­ther way are very, very fine­ly bal­anced.”

The Dutch gov­ern­ment be­gan a tough na­tion­wide lock­down on Sun­day to rein in sharply ris­ing in­fec­tions, but many Eu­ro­pean lead­ers have opt­ed for some­thing less.

France and Ger­many have barred most British trav­el­ers from en­ter­ing, and the gov­ern­ment in Paris has banned pub­lic con­certs and fire­works dis­plays at New Year’s cel­e­bra­tions. Ire­land im­posed an 8 p.m. cur­few on pubs and bars and lim­it­ed at­ten­dance at in­door and out­door events, while Greece will have 10,000 po­lice of­fi­cers on du­ty over the hol­i­days to car­ry out COVID-19 pass checks.

In Spain, the na­tion­al av­er­age of new cas­es is dou­ble what it was a year ago. But au­thor­i­ties in the coun­try with one of Eu­rope’s high­est vac­ci­na­tion rates are bet­ting pri­mar­i­ly on manda­to­ry mask-wear­ing in­doors and the roll­out of boost­er shots, with no fur­ther re­stric­tions planned.

Neigh­bor­ing Por­tu­gal is telling most nonessen­tial work­ers to work from home for a week in Jan­u­ary, but the coun­try has no oth­er new mea­sures in the pipeline.

Stock mar­kets in Asia, Eu­rope and the U.S. fell on Mon­day with the ex­pec­ta­tion that the in­fec­tions could weigh on glob­al eco­nom­ic growth and wors­en glob­al sup­ply chain chal­lenges.

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As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Dar­lene Su­perville con­tributed to this re­port.