Record weekly jump in COVID-19 cases but fewer deaths
NY Schools are ‘Staying Open,’ Mayor Eric Adams Says
Washington DC: The World Health Organization said Thursday that a record 9.5 million COVID-19 cases were tallied over the last week as the omicron variant of the coronavirus swept the planet, a 71 percent increase from the previous 7-day period that the UN health agency likened to a “tsunami.” However, the number of weekly recorded deaths declined.
“Last week, the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases were reported so far in the pandemic,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. He said the WHO was certain that was an underestimate because of a backlog in testing around the year-end holidays.
While omicron seems less severe than delta, especially among people who have been vaccinated, the WHO chief cautioned: “It does not mean it should be categorized as mild. Just like previous variants, omicron is hospitalizing people, and it’s killing people.”
The U.S. hit 1 million new Covid-19 cases on January 3, underscoring the threat of the omicron variant as the third year of the pandemic gets underway. Washington DC and Florida have had the largest jumps in new cases in the last two weeks. Covid-19 cases increased 902 percent in Washington DC and by 744 percent in Florida in the past two weeks. The record single-day total could reflect delayed reporting, as a number of states did not announce data on New Year’s Eve and during the holiday weekend.
Omicron “Spreading Explosively” across the US, but here’s the Good News
Though the omicron variant tends to be milder, it is spreading so explosively across the U.S. that many hospitals expect it to rival or surpass previous records for admitting Covid-19 patients. Hospitals are bracing for a continuous rise in Covid-19 related bed demand for the month ahead, according to models from several facilities around the country.
At Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, “Our all-time peak was 451 Covid-19 patients in April of 2020,” said Robert Fogerty, who oversees the 1541-bed hospital’s capacity management. “I think we’re going to blow past that by next week.”
The good news, he and other hospital data experts said, is that compared with previous waves, omicron is landing far fewer people in intensive-care units, especially in regions where vaccination rates are high.
The rising demand for beds has prompted health officials to step up some protective measures, including urging people to obtain vaccine boosters and wear higher-quality masks, even though omicron infections appear to cause milder symptoms than earlier strains.
