Omicron pushes every day. Covid-19 Cases Higher, Holiday Travel Is Slowed Down. Over the holiday weekend, more than 2,000 flights had to be cancelled because of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. This shows how the new strain is a different kind of threat to both the economy and everyday life.
It looks like the Omicron variant of the virus isn’t as bad for people as other strains of the virus. Covid-19, even a milder version that quickly spreads, can cause businesses and people to cancel their plans.
The flight cancellations also raise questions about government policies, which could put even more pressure on authorities to ease the Covid-19 quarantine rules so that workers who aren’t seriously ill can return to their jobs sooner than they would have before.
When Covid-19 Delta hit the country earlier this year, it was at its highest level yet. This weekend, the seven-day average for Covid-19 cases surpassed that high point.
If you look at data from Johns Hopkins, the average number of Covid-19 cases is now at 184,802. Hospitalizations in the United States have been going up all month. Until Jan. 21, when the U.S. came off of the peak of the winter surge, there was no seven-day average that was higher.
The number of people getting sick in France every day for the first time hit 100,000 on Saturday. It’s been a rough few days for people who have been infected with a virus called Omicron, which has become the most common in the UK.
In advance of the holiday weekend, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its guidelines for treating people who get the virus. They now say that people who get the virus should be isolated and quarantined for seven days, instead of 10 days, after they get a negative test.
Critical workers in New York state can now return to work after five days if they have the virus, thanks to a Christmas Eve decision by Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who is in charge of the state. This includes people who work in the fields of education, health care, transportation, grocery stores, and sanitation.
There aren’t enough people to work for airlines, so they’ve asked the CDC to shorten the quarantine period for workers. People asked the CDC for comment, but the CDC said no. The White House sent them a request for comment to the CDC.
During a TV interview, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said that data from South Africa and the United Kingdom shows that the Omicron variant has a lower risk of serious illness than other strains.
Even so, Dr. Fauci said that U.S. officials are very concerned about making sure there are enough staff and resources to make sure “we don’t get an overrun on the hospitals.”
There will be a Covid-19 test run on Thursday in Washington, DC to see how well it works. People in the United States have had more Covid-19 cases in the last week than they did at the height of Delta’s trip through their country.
President Obama wants to make sure that we have enough military personnel, doctors, nurses, and other health care workers to back up hospitals, as well as make sure that we have enough personal protective equipment and that there are enough ventilators in the national strategic stockpile if we need them, Dr. Fauci said in an appearance on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos that aired on Sunday, per USA Today.
People who haven’t been vaccinated and are more likely to get the virus are especially concerned about the new variant, the official said.
Hospitalizations have been going up a lot this month. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data shows that as of Sunday, there were more than 71,000 people in U.S. hospitals with confirmed and suspected Covid-19 cases. This includes both the Omicron and Delta variants of Covid-19 that have been confirmed or suspected.
That’s up almost 19,000 from a month ago, but it’s not as high as when more than 100,000 people were hospitalised in late August and early September.
A flight tracking site called FlightAware says that over 1,200 U.S. flights were cancelled on Sunday alone.
As of Thursday, Friday, and Christmas Day, there were 5.4 million people who went through U.S. airport security checkpoints. This compares to 2.6 million on the same days last year and 7.6 million on the same days in 2019.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said the Biden administration has done a good job of making sure there are enough Covid-19 tests available.
On “Fox News Sunday,” he said that the two things the administration needs to do better are communicate better with the American people and make testing much, much easier for people to get.
He said that he hopes that the government will start giving out half a billion Covid-19 testing kits in January.
When Dr. Fauci was on ABC, he said, “There are still some problems now with people having trouble getting tested, but we are working on the testing problem.” He said that the problem would get solved soon.
Hospital in France, which passed 100,000 new infections for the first time on Saturday.
