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 Coronavirus deaths hit an 11-month high on Sunday, climbing 11% in
the past week when compared to the prior week, according to a
Reuters.
COVID-19 fatalities are a lagging indicator, meaning their numbers
usually rise a few weeks after new cases and hospitalizations.
The Omicron death toll has now surpassed the height of deaths caused
by the more severe Delta variant when the seven-day average peaked
at 2,078 on Sept. 23 last year. An average of 2,200 people a day,
mostly unvaccinated, are now dying due to Omicron.
That is still below the peak of 3,300 lives lost a day during the
surge in January 2021 as vaccines were just being rolled out.
"It will be a while until we see (a) decrease in death as very sick
people with COVID remain hospitalized for a long time," said Wafaa
El-Sadr, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia
University in New York City.
As Omicron surged in December and earlier this month, hospital
systems from New Jersey to New Mexico buckled under the sheer number
of patients brought in by the apparently less severe but highly
infectious variant, prompting the federal government to send
military medical aid to six states.
"More infectious variants tend to run through a population very
rapidly," said El-Sadr in an email. "Even if such new variants cause
less severe disease (particularly among those vaccinated and
boosted), we will likely still see increase in hospitalizations and
deaths due to vulnerability of unvaccinated and unboosted."
COVID-19 hospitalizations are still setting records in some states
including Arkansas and North Carolina. Nationally they are now under
147,000, compared with a peak of 152,746 on Jan. 20, the Reuters
tally shows.
Cases nationally are down by 12% in the last seven days compared
with the prior seven, the analysis found, prompting some health
officials to strike a cautiously optimist tone on the trajectory of
the pandemic.
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 "It's certainly reached its peak in certain
regions of the country," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the
nation's top infectious disease official, said
in an interview with MSNBC on Monday. "I believe
that in the next few weeks we will see - as a
country - that it is all turning around."
U.S. COVID-19 data often lag a few days behind
the actual state of affairs and paints an
imperfect picture.
Positive findings from the now ubiquitous
at-home tests are not included in the official
case count, while hospitalization counts often
do not differentiate between patients who are
receiving treatment for COVID-19 and others who
test positive while in the hospital with other
issues.
On Monday, the head of the World Health
Organization (WHO) warned that it was dangerous
to assume Omicron would herald the end of
COVID-19's most acute phase, and exhorted
nations to stay focused to beat the pandemic.
The Omicron wave scrambled the hopes of
Americans for a gradual transition into a
post-pandemic reality and re-ignited tensions
around masking and vaccines in schools and
workplaces, exposing once again the deep
political fault lines cracked open by the health
crisis.
On Sunday, large crowds rallied in Washington,
D.C., in opposition of COVID-19 mandates, some
holding signs that read "people call the shot,
not the government."
Virginia's new Republican Governor Glenn
Youngkin is facing a lawsuit from seven school
boards seeking to stop his order that would make
masks optional in school as of Monday.
A spokesperson for Youngkin, vowing to fight the
lawsuit, said on Monday, "We are disappointed
that these school boards are ignoring parent's
rights."
(Reporting by Maria Caspani in New York and Lisa
Shumaker in Chicago; additional reporting by
Susan Heavey in Washington, Kanishka Singh in
Bengaluru and Christine Kiernan in New York;
editing by Bill Berkrot)
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