This Tuesday (28), the United States reached a moving average of 254,496 new Covid-19 cases in the past seven days, according to data from Johns Hopkins University – surpassing the previous record of about 251,989, recorded on 11th of January.
The index comes amid a rapid acceleration of infections that the US – and the rest of the world – have seen for the past month.
And experts predict that the Omicron variant – the most contagious strain of coronavirus to date – will make early 2022 very difficult.
“January is going to be a very, very difficult month. And people must prepare for a month where many people will be infected,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
The medical analyst of CNN, Dr Jonathan Reiner, said on Sunday (26) that he believes the US could “see half a million cases a day – easy – sometime in the next week to 10 days”.
Most people vaccinated, with two or three doses, will not develop severe symptoms, but unvaccinated people will not, Jha said.
“A lot of people who haven’t had the vaccine are going to get very sick, and that’s going to be upsetting,” Jha said. “My hope is that we get to February and March, and the infection numbers start to drop, the weather will start to improve.”
Despite expert calls for Americans to be immunized, the rate of booster shots given has dropped in recent weeks, and only 32.7 percent of the nation’s fully vaccinated population has received the extra dose.
“I recommend that people continue to wear a mask whenever they are in a place with a lot of people for an extended period of time,” Jha said.
On New Year’s Eve this Friday (31), small gatherings of fully vaccinated people are safe, said Dr. Anthony Fauci. But people should avoid big parties where they don’t know the vaccination status of all guests, he said.
“When you’re talking about a New Year’s Eve party where you have 30, 40, 50 people celebrating, you don’t know the status of the vaccination, I strongly recommend it: stay away from it this year,” said Fauci, the country’s leading epidemiological expert.
Pediatric admissions approaching previous record
Holidays such as Christmas and New Years leave some health professionals worried about the impact on children in the coming weeks – especially those who are too young to be vaccinated.
“We just had all these kids mingling with everyone else over Christmas,” said Dr. Claudia Hoyen, director of pediatric infection control at UH Rainbow Children’s Hospital in Ohio.
“We have one more holiday to end with the New Year, and then we’ll be sending everyone back to school. Everyone is kind of on edge, wondering what we’re going to see.”
Across the country, pediatric admissions for Covid-19 are approaching the record set in September.
On average, about 305 children were admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 daily in the past week, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Department of Health and Human Services.
This represents a jump of more than 48% compared to the previous week’s average and just 10.7% lower than the peak of 342 hospitalized children recorded at the end of August and beginning of September.
In New York City, where cases are on the rise and the median positivity rate continues to rise, pediatric hospitalizations increased fivefold in a three-week period.
In Chicago, hospitalizations at a children’s hospital quadrupled. At Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC, nearly half of the Covid-19 tests are coming back positive.
This content was originally created in English.
original version
Reference: CNN Brasil

I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.