By HOPE YEN and AAMER MAD­HANI | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — As the COVID-19 omi­cron vari­ant surges across the Unit­ed States, top fed­er­al health of­fi­cials are look­ing to add a neg­a­tive test along with its five-day iso­la­tion re­stric­tions for asymp­to­matic Amer­i­cans who catch the coro­n­avirus, the White House’s top med­ical ad­vis­er said Sun­day.

Dr. An­tho­ny Fau­ci said the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion is now con­sid­er­ing in­clud­ing the neg­a­tive test as part of its guid­ance af­ter get­ting sig­nif­i­cant “push­back” on its up­dat­ed rec­om­men­da­tions last week.

Un­der that Dec. 27 guid­ance, iso­la­tion re­stric­tions for peo­ple in­fect­ed with COVID-19 were short­ened from 10 days to five days if they are no longer feel­ing symp­toms or run­ning a fever. Af­ter that pe­ri­od, they are asked to spend the fol­low­ing five days wear­ing a mask when around oth­ers.

The guide­lines have since re­ceived crit­i­cism from many health pro­fes­sion­als for not spec­i­fy­ing a neg­a­tive anti­gen test as a re­quire­ment for leav­ing iso­la­tion.

“There has been some con­cern about why we don’t ask peo­ple at that five-day pe­ri­od to get test­ed,” Fau­ci said. “Look­ing at it again, there may be an op­tion in that, that test­ing could be a part of that, and I think we’re go­ing to be hear­ing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC.”

Fau­ci, the na­tion’s top in­fec­tious dis­eases ex­pert, said the U.S. has been see­ing al­most a “ver­ti­cal in­crease” of new cas­es, now av­er­ag­ing 400,000 cas­es a day, with hos­pi­tal­iza­tions al­so up.

“We are def­i­nite­ly in the mid­dle of a very se­vere surge and uptick in cas­es,” he said. “The ac­cel­er­a­tion of cas­es that we’ve seen is re­al­ly un­prece­dent­ed, gone well be­yond any­thing we’ve seen be­fore.”

Fau­ci said he’s con­cerned that the omi­cron vari­ant is over­whelm­ing the health care sys­tem and caus­ing a “ma­jor dis­rup­tion” on oth­er es­sen­tial ser­vices.

“When I say ma­jor dis­rup­tions, you’re cer­tain­ly go­ing to see stress­es on the sys­tem and the sys­tem be­ing peo­ple with any kind of jobs ... par­tic­u­lar­ly with crit­i­cal jobs to keep so­ci­ety func­tion­ing nor­mal­ly,” Fau­ci said. “We al­ready know that there are re­ports from fire de­part­ments, from po­lice de­part­ments in dif­fer­ent cities that 10, 20, 25 and some­times 30% of the peo­ple are ill. That’s some­thing that we need to be con­cerned about, be­cause we want to make sure that we don’t have such an im­pact on so­ci­ety that there re­al­ly is a dis­rup­tion. I hope that doesn’t hap­pen.”

The surg­ing vari­ant is rav­aging oth­er sec­tors of the work­force and Amer­i­can life.

Win­try weath­er com­bined with the pan­dem­ic were blamed for Sun­day’s ground­ing of more than 2,500 U.S. flights and more than 4,100 world­wide. Dozens of U.S. col­leges are mov­ing class­es on­line again for at least the first week or so of the se­mes­ter — and some warn it could stretch longer if the wave of in­fec­tion doesn’t sub­side soon. Many com­pa­nies that had been al­low­ing of­fice work­ers to work re­mote­ly but that were plan­ning to re­turn to the of­fice ear­ly in 2022 have fur­ther de­layed those plans.

The White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ As­so­ci­a­tion an­nounced on Sun­day that the num­ber of jour­nal­ists al­lowed in the brief­ing room for at least the first few weeks of the year would be scaled back be­cause of con­cerns about the fast-spread­ing virus. Typ­i­cal­ly 49 re­porters have seats for the dai­ly brief­ing, but on­ly 14 re­porters will be seat­ed un­der the re­stric­tions. The White House lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty in the brief­ing room ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic but re­turned to full ca­pac­i­ty in June 2021.

While there is “ac­cu­mu­lat­ing ev­i­dence” that omi­cron might lead to less se­vere ill­ness, he cau­tioned that the da­ta re­mains ear­ly. Fau­ci said he wor­ries in par­tic­u­lar about the tens of mil­lions of un­vac­ci­nat­ed Amer­i­cans be­cause “a fair num­ber of them are go­ing to get se­vere dis­ease.”

He urged Amer­i­cans who have not yet got­ten vac­ci­nat­ed and boost­ed to do so and to mask up in­doors to pro­tect them­selves and blunt the cur­rent surge of U.S. cas­es.

The Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion last week said pre­lim­i­nary re­search in­di­cates at-home rapid tests de­tect omi­cron, but may have re­duced sen­si­tiv­i­ty. The agency not­ed it’s still study­ing how the tests per­form with the vari­ant, which was first de­tect­ed in late No­vem­ber.

Fau­ci said Amer­i­cans “should not get the im­pres­sion that those tests are not valu­able.”

“I think the con­fu­sion is that rapid anti­gen tests have nev­er been as sen­si­tive as the PCR test,” Fau­ci said. “They’re very good when they are giv­en se­quen­tial­ly. So, if you do them like maybe two or three times over a few-day pe­ri­od, at the end of the day, they are as good as the PCR. But as a sin­gle test, they are not as sen­si­tive.”

A PCR test usu­al­ly needs to be processed in a lab­o­ra­to­ry. The test looks for the virus’s ge­net­ic ma­te­r­i­al and then re­pro­duces it mil­lions of times un­til it’s de­tectable with a com­put­er.

Fau­ci said if Amer­i­cans take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions, the U.S. might see some sem­blance of more nor­mal life re­turn­ing soon.

“One of the things that we hope for is that this thing will peak af­ter a pe­ri­od of a few weeks and turn around,” Fau­ci said. He ex­pressed hope that by Feb­ru­ary or March, omi­cron could fall to a low enough lev­el “that it doesn’t dis­rupt our so­ci­ety, our econ­o­my, our way of life.”

Fau­ci spoke on ABC’s “This Week” and CNN’s “State of the Union.”

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Aamer Mad­hani re­port­ed from Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware.