U.S. COVID peak may be over but not the pain as deaths rise
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[January 25, 2022]
By Maria Caspani and Lisa Shumaker
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Even as COVID-19 cases
drop and hospitalizations show signs of plateauing in hard-hit pockets
of the United States, the still-rising death toll from the Omicron
variant highlights the trail of loss that follows every virus surge.
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.
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Medical staff treat a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patient in
their isolation room on the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Western
Reserve Hospital in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, U.S., January 4, 2022.
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
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.
"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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