Covid-19 cases in Florida have risen by 948% in just two weeks, as the highly transmissible Omicron variant drives a huge wave of infections and hospitalizations across the US.
Even as Dr Anthony Fauci – Joe Biden’s top medical adviser – cautioned the public to look at hospitalizations and not infections in order to gauge Omicron’s severity, the seven-day average for US patients hospitalized with Covid-19 increased by more than 40% during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Cases have risen by more than 100% nationally, despite tests being in short supply in many areas, and infections have doubled in the last seven days to an average of 418,000 a day, according to a Reuters tally.
In Florida, local and state officials warned that residents were waiting hours in sometimes miles-long lines just to get a test. Some accused the state health department and the governor, Ron DeSantis, of being missing in action.
“It’s every man/woman for themselves, because leadership is MIA,” tweeted state senator Shevrin Jones.
Evidence suggests Omicron is a more mild if highly infectious variant. But it “will still do terrible damage among the unvaccinated in both the US and worldwide”, according to the New York Times.
Only 62% of the US population is fully vaccinated, with numbers especially low in the south and many of the mountain states. Boosters are available for people 16 and older, but only about a third of fully vaccinated Americans have opted to get one – despite Fauci saying the extra dose represents “optimal” protection from Omicron.
The Food and Drug Administration decided on Monday that 12- to 15-year-olds should also be eligible for a booster, although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still needs to give the green light.
Some immunocompromised Americans are going back for fourth or fifth shots, though it is unclear whether doing so is safe or effective, the New York Times reported.
Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins University, told the paper that hundreds enrolled in a study he is working on have received unauthorized doses.
“They’re acting out of desperation,” he said. “Rather than say, ‘Shame on them,’ I would say, ‘Shame on the system we’ve created.’”
In Washington DC, meanwhile, Congress is experiencing an unprecedented rise in Covid-19 cases, with the seven-day positivity rate at a congressional test site surging to 13% from just 1% in late November, the Capitol’s attending physician said on Monday.
Most coronavirus infections on Capitol Hill have been occurring among the vaccinated, with the Omicron variant representing about 61% and the Delta variant 38%, based on a limited sample as of 15 December, Dr Brian Monahan told lawmakers and staff in a 3 January letter.
Some school systems around the US have extended their holiday break or switched back to online instruction because of the explosion in cases.
Others pressed ahead with in-person classes amid a seemingly growing sense that Americans will have to learn to co-exist with the virus, armed with the vaccines that help prevent the spread and mitigate the severity of illness and the evolving range of tested treatments.
Covid-19 has killed more than 820,000 people across the US. It has upended lives and livelihoods, disrupted education, left Americans feeling isolated, and at times sent the economy into free-fall.
Mass holiday travel was a predictable recipe for yet another surge, similar to last winter. But nearly two years into the pandemic, the US was still woefully ill-equipped for such conditions and the Omicron variant, sending Americans scrambling to even find tests.
Over the holiday season, thousands of flights were canceled because of Omicron-caused staffing shortages. Last week, the US smashed its record for Covid-19 infections reported in one day. Major companies are having to reconsider plans for employees to finally return to offices.
Yet some experts and analysts still hope that Omicron will ultimately represent a move toward normalcy, where Covid-19 becomes a long-term reality but causes less devastation.
“I think it’s likely that we’ll see this wave come and go and that the spring and summer will look a lot better than right now looks to us,” Ofer Levy, director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s hospital, told CNN.
“There will be fewer cases, and then again, next fall and winter we’ll see a spike of viral illnesses, coronaviruses, influenza and others, but that it’ll be more like an endemic cycle.”
Also on Monday, it was reported that the Manhattan district attorney has closed its investigation into former New York state governor Andrew Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes during the pandemic.
The New York state health department said that Cuomo’s Covid-19 task force altered an official report and omitted 9,250 nursing home patients killed by coronavirus.
Elkan Abramowitz, an attorney for Cuomo, said an investigation had concluded no laws were broken.
