The United States has reported more than one million new COVID-19 cases in a single day, setting a grim new global record, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
There were 1,082,549 new cases in the US reported on Monday following the long New Year’s weekend, according to the tracking group. The number of cases reported on a Monday is typically higher than other days because of delays in weekend tallying, especially after a three-day holiday weekend.
The figure reported on January 3, however, is double the number of daily cases compared with the previous Monday. The new data comes after top US pandemic adviser Dr Anthony Fauci said the country was experiencing “almost a vertical increase” in coronavirus cases. The peak, he said, may be only weeks away.
The Omicron variant, the most transmissible strain to date, accounted for about 59 percent of US cases in the week ending December 25, according to government modelling.
Fauci said the experience of South Africa – where the strain was first detected in late November and peaked quickly, then subsided nearly as speedily – offered some hope. Rates of death and hospitalisation in the US have been lower in recent weeks compared with previous spikes in case numbers, but the sheer number of new cases is causing concern for some health centers.
“We are hearing a lot of fear and concern across the country from this new variant,” Al Jazeera’s John Hendren reported from Washington, DC. “One in four medical centres with an ICU are reporting that they are 90 percent or more full.”
More than 36,400 people in the US have died from COVID-19 in the past 28 days, according to Johns Hopkins data released on Tuesday. The country recorded more than 6.9 million new cases over that period.
Source: Aljazeera
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