The US, on Wednesday, reported 488,000 cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. The seven-day average of cases in the US is also reaching a high with an average of 265,000 cases per day driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
“It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen, even at the peak of the prior surges of Covid,” Dr James Phillips, chief of disaster medicine at George Washington University Hospital, told CNN. The latest numbers are eclipsing the records set in January, during the second wave of the pandemic.
A high number of cases are been recorded in New Jersey, New York and Chicago. Health experts have warned Americans to gear up for possible disruptions in their everyday lives in the coming days due to the virus. “We are going to see the number of cases in this country rise so dramatically, we are going to have a hard time keeping everyday life operating,” Dr Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, told MSNBC.
According to data from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the Omicron variant accounted for 58.6 per cent of all new infections in the US in the week ending on December 25. 61.9 per cent of US population has been fully vaccinated. “The pattern and disparity between cases and hospitalization strongly suggest that there will be a lower hospitalization-to-case ratio when the situation becomes more clear," said Dr Anthony Fauci, the Chief Medical Advisor to the President of the United States.
