The omicron variant of the coronavirus already accounts for 95% of COVID-19 cases in the United States, where infections have doubled in the last week, health authorities announced.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, in English), Rochelle Walensky, said at the press conference of the White House response team to the pandemic that the average number of cases per day in the last week has been 491,700 infections, “an increase of 98% compared to the previous week.”
On Monday alone, more than a million new cases were registered in the country, boosted by the expansion of the omicron variant.
Walensky added that in the last seven days the average hospital admissions was 14,800 per day, which represents an increase of 63% compared to the previous week, while there was an average of 1,200 deaths per day (an increase of 5%).
“In recent weeks and during the holidays we have seen a rapid and significant increase in COVID-19 cases. This increase is due to the influx of cases caused by the delta variant, and what is more important, due to the rebound in omicron cases ”, indicated Walensky.
Even so, he remarked that in the last month the percentage of omicron infections has grown against a decrease in those caused by delta, which currently represents 5% of cases compared to 95% of the new variant, detected for the first time at late November in South Africa.
The United States continues to be the country with the highest number of infections and deaths from COVID-19 in the world, accumulating 57.1 million cases and more than 830,000 deaths as of this Wednesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
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