The US government’s leading infectious diseases official, Anthony Fauci, has stepped up calls for Americans to get a Covid-19 booster shot, as the US is approaching 800,000 lives lost to coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.

Fauci warned that the Omicron variant appeared to be able to “evade” the protection of two initial doses of the mRNA-type Covid vaccines – Pfizer/BioNTech’s and Moderna’s – as well as post-infection therapies such as monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma.

Omicron is spurring new fears as US infections begin to surge again, with infections currently still led by the highly-transmissable Delta variant that has dominated since the summer.

Fauci said an extra vaccine shot provides “optimal” protection against Omicron, even though the government’s official designation of “fully vaccinated” remained at two doses of Pfizer or Moderna, or one of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which was developed by another method.

“Preliminary data show that when you get a booster, for example a third shot of an mRNA, it raises the level of protection high enough that it then does do well against the Omicron,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to the president, said on ABC.