By omicron, counting COVID-19 cases could lose relevance

The explosive increase in coronavirus cases registered in U.S is cause for alarm, but some experts believe that the focus should be on the number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19. And these are not increasing that fast.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, for example, said on ABC Sunday that since many infections cause few or no symptoms, “it is much more relevant to look at hospitalizations than at the total number of cases.” Other experts argue that the case count is still valuable.

As the contagious omicron variant spreads across the United States, new COVID-19 cases per day have tripled in the past two weeks, reaching an average of 480,000. Schools, hospitals and airlines are struggling with understaffing caused by the isolation of infected workers.

Hospital admissions averaged 14,800 a day last week, which is a 63% increase from the previous week, but is still below the high of 16,500 a day a year ago, when the vast majority of Americans did not. they were vaccinated.

The number of deaths has remained stable over the last two weeks, averaging about 1,200 a day, well below the all-time high of 3,400 in January last year.

Public health experts suspect that these figures, taken together, reflect the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing a serious picture of COVID, even against the omicron variant, as well as the possibility that it does not make most people sick as previous versions.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported Tuesday that omicron is responsible for 95% of new coronavirus infections in the United States, another indicator of the astonishing speed with which this variant has spread since it was first detected in South Africa in late November.

Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, director of ICAP, a global health center at Columbia University, said the number of cases does not appear to be the number that matters most now.

Instead, he said, at this stage of the pandemic, the United States should “shift focus, especially in the vaccination phase, to focus on preventing disease, disability and death, and therefore counting these.”

The number of daily cases has been one of the most closely watched statistics during the outbreak and a very reliable early warning sign of severe cases and deaths in previous coronavirus waves.

The daily case count is also subject to sharp fluctuations. The number of new cases registered on Monday surpassed a record 1 million, a number that may reflect cases that had been delayed due to delayed reporting over the holiday weekend. The average figure for the previous seven days is considered more reliable.