The cases are already dropping, and hospitalizations are also decreasing, but the death toll shows how bad this battle actually is. The deaths have risen by 11% in the past week, and their number go up a few weeks after new cases are registered.
Deaths from Omicron have surpassed the deaths caused by the Delta variant – around 2.078 back on September 23. Now, around 2.200 people die from Omicron. Most of them are unvaccinated.
Wafaa El-Sadr, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University stated: “It will be a while until we see (a) decrease in death as very sick people with COVID remain hospitalized for a long time.”
Hospitals are still struggling due to the high number of the cases. The federal government has sent military medical help to a total of six states.
El-Sadr then added: “More infectious variants tend to run through a population very rapidly. Even if such new variants cause less severe disease (particularly among those vaccinated and boosted), we will likely still see an increase in hospitalizations and deaths due to vulnerability of unvaccinated and unboosted.”
Arkansas and North Carolina are setting records, with numbers like 147,000. But nationally, cases are down by 12% in the last week, if we are to compare it with the situation from the past seven weeks.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the virus has peaked in some regions of the country, and that that next following weeks will bring better news.
And, of course, the positive cases from the at-home tests are not included in the official count. While some believe Omicron will be the end of the pandemic, WHO has warned that it’s quite dangerous to believe that, and that we still need to fight in order to win the battle.
