In the United Kingdom, the Omicron variant doubles in value every second day. Officials worked to make it easier for people to get Covid-19 tests and told people to be careful as the Omicron variant spread quickly in the U.S., Europe, and other places.
New York City sent health inspectors out on Friday to make sure that people were wearing masks and getting vaccinated. Officials in the city said they were going to add more testing sites and make more room at existing ones after long lines formed at some places. It took three days from Friday to Sunday for the Covid-19 positivity rate in the city to double.
He said the city would give out 500,000 quick, at-home tests and 1 million K95 masks with the help of community groups.
In this variation, things move really fast! he said: “We need to move faster.”
Cases of the Omicron variant kept spreading quickly across the United Kingdom, with some parts of the country having more than one case every 1.5 days. Health officials in South Africa say that despite a big rise in Covid-19 infections, the number of people who needed to go to the hospital was much lower than it was earlier in the pandemic.
The U.S. has shown that the Omicron variant is getting bigger. There were 2.9 percent of Covid cases across the country in the week to December 11, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New York and New Jersey had the most cases with 13.1 percent.
At this point in the fourth wave of infections, only 1.7 percent of Covid-19 cases are hospitalised, compared to 19 percent at this point in the third wave, which was mostly caused by the Delta variant. This is a big difference, because the Delta variant caused the third wave.
Health Minister, Joe Phaahla, said that hospitalizations have gone up by 70% over the last week, but from a low base with a lot of positive cases in people who came in with another problem.
Oxygen-ventilator use is also lower than in previous waves, and there are fewer admissions to high- and intensive-care units than there were in the past.
People under the age of 40 now stay at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases for three to four days, and people over the age of 50 stay for four to five days. The number of kids getting in has also dropped from 25% to less than 10%, with many of the positive cases that happened by chance, she said.
Scientists and vaccine makers are looking into Omicron, a Covid-19 variant that has about 50 different mutations. This variant has been found in many countries after it spread from southern Africa. Here’s what we know so far as the U.S. and other countries put restrictions on travel. Fazry Ismail took the picture.
South Africa has a lot of people who have had Covid-19 or a vaccine before, or both. There are still a lot of studies to be done to figure out if this strain is more or less dangerous than other strains that have been found. She said that 93% of the people who have died so far have not been vaccinated or have been partially vaccinated.
This is what people are saying: There are some signs that the most populous province in South Africa, Gauteng, may have already reached its peak. On Thursday, it said that only 27% of people in the country had been infected, compared to 70% 10 days earlier.
