Washington. With more than 265,000 infections a day on average for a week, the United States faces a worrying record of COVID-19 infections due to the variant Omicron, which beats the wave of January 2021.
The average number of new cases per day in the last seven days in the country most mourned by the covid, was 265,427, thus surpassing the record of 251,989 reached in January 2021, according to figures published this Wednesday by Johns Hopkins University.
Omicron is the dominant variant in the United States, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It accounted for around 59% of new cases in the week ending December 25.
However, this federal public health agency has drastically revised down its estimates for the previous week (the one ended on December 18) for the new variant: from 73% of omicron to 22.5 percent.
“We have received more data on this period and there has been a reduction in the proportion of omicron,” explained a CDC spokeswoman.
“It is important to note that we continue to see a continuous increase in the proportion of omicron,” he insisted nonetheless.
“A fast wave”
The curve of new infections, which fell between the beginning of September and the end of October after a fourth wave caused by the delta variant, has risen again for two months and is now skyrocketing with the highly contagious omicron.
“It will be a fast wave, but very difficult”, estimated yesterday on Twitter Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina, who also considers that the record of infections is only the “tip of the iceberg” due to the number of cases not detected or undeclared.
This problem is compounded by the fact that antigen tests, which have the advantage of giving a result in just a few minutes, are less sensitive to omicron than previous variants, US health authorities warned Tuesday.
This means that these tests are more likely to be negative even though the person has been infected (called false negatives).
At the moment the hospitalization curve is also increasing, with about 9,000 daily admissions of new COVID-19 patients in the United States, but it is far from the 16,500 registered in early January 2021, according to data from the CDC.
Currently around 1,200 people die on average daily from covid-19 in the United States, while a year ago the maximum was about 3,400 deaths.
Reduced quarantine
According to figures from Johns Hopkins University, more than 820,000 people have died from covid-19 in the United States since the outbreak of the pandemic, the highest number known worldwide.
Faced with the outbreak of infections that causes disruption to restaurants and forces the cancellation of flights and shows, the US government decided this week to reduce by half the recommended duration of quarantine for positive people, which goes from 10 to five days for asymptomatic and from 14 to five days for unvaccinated close contacts of positive cases.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx