There are now 73 percent of new COVID cases in the U.S. that are caused by Omicron.
The national rate says that more than 650,000 people in the US got omicron infections last week. When US got infected with delta variants at the end of June, they were mostly the ones that got them. As recently as the end of November, the CDC said that more than 99.5 percent of coronaviruses were delta. Much about the omicron variant is unknown, including whether it makes people sicker or not.
If you get a vaccine, you may need a booster shot in the future, but even if you don’t, the vaccine should still protect you from getting very sick or dying even if you don’t get a second dose. All of us have a date with omicron, says Dr. Smith. If you’re going to be part of society or live any kind of life, you’re going to run into omicron.
Vaccination to fight the spread
The best way to deal with this is to be fully vaccinated. Dr. Amesh Adalja said “I was not surprised to see that US omicron had overtaken Delta. I didn’t think that was surprising at all.” He said that the virus would spread over the holidays, with people who had been vaccinated getting new infections and people who hadn’t been vaccinated having serious problems that could strain already overworked hospitals. Omicron’s rapid growth has been seen in other countries, but the CDC’s estimates are based on thousands of coronavirus specimens that are collected each week by university and commercial labs, as well as state and local health departments, as well as other sources.
Monday, the CDC changed its estimate of how many people had omicron infections for the week ending December. More than 13% of the illnesses that week came from omicron, not just 3. The week before, only 0.4% of cases were omicron. CDC officials say they don’t yet know how many people have been hospitalized or died because of omicron, and they don’t know how many people have died because of it.
It doesn’t look like the delta variant is going away any time soon either.
