Omicron ravaged the world, and the cumulative number of confirmed cases in 7 days doubled to more than 10 million

WASHINGTON - As people around the world celebrate New Year's Day 2022, the ultra-contagious mutant Omicron is also on the move. Despite governments around the world implementing or reinstating containment measures of varying degrees, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 around the world in the past week has almost doubled from the previous seven-day high to more than 10 million.

According to Bloomberg, in the seven days of the week ending on Sunday (January 2), the number of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus around the world hit a record high of 10 million, which is higher than last April, fueled by the Omicron mutant strain. The late-week high of 5.7 million cases nearly doubled.

Moreover, as the epidemic worsened, many people gave up nucleic acid testing at all, or used home testing kits to test themselves at home, resulting in failure to report the results to local authorities in a timely manner.

All this has not only caused thousands of flights to be canceled and offices and stores closed around the world, but also caused factories to shut down and supply chains to break.

Many countries including the United States, Australia, Italy and France have a surge in confirmed cases, which means two years later after Wuhan's viruses , and the vaccine has been used for more than one year. A new year holiday will be destroied  again.

On Sunday, there were 867,400 new confirmed cases worldwide; 254,091 new confirmed cases in the United States.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin tested positive for the new coronavirus while on leave from home.

The United Kingdom requires high school students to take a new crown test before returning to school.

Vaccination passes in South Korea must now be stamped with an expiration date.

Israel, meanwhile, began giving seniors 60 years and older a fourth booster dose of the vaccine.

The only good news is that the death toll from Covid-19 has continued to decline for a week and is now at its lowest point in more than a year. What remains to be seen is whether the death toll rises in the new year as confirmed cases skyrocket, or whether the death rate remains flat due to milder illness caused by the Omicron strain.

White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci believes that the surge in confirmed cases caused by Omicron is not terrible. What is terrible is that the medical system is overwhelmed by too many patients.

According to the New York Times, the United States reported an average of more than 401,200 confirmed cases per day for a week, triple the number two weeks ago, and it was the first time since the outbreak that the number of confirmed cases in a single day exceeded 400,000. The current rate of hospitalizations for infected patients rose 33% to 92,300, while the death rate fell 4% to an average of 1,249 per day.

It is unclear how many of the patients hospitalized with the virus were infected with the Omicron and Delta strains; however, according to CDC statistics, on December 25, 2021, In the week that ended, Omicron infections accounted for 58% of new confirmed cases in the U.S., while Delta accounted for 41%.

Fauci said Sunday in an ABC television interview that many of the confirmed cases, especially those infected with the third booster dose, are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, suggesting confirmed cases The number of cases of infection with previous mutant strains has become less important.

“As time goes on and the infectivity wanes, it makes more sense to focus on hospitalization rates than on the number of confirmed cases,” Fauci said.

Due to the super infectiousness of the Omicron mutant strain, it has directly led to a surge in confirmed cases in the United States. And because many people test positive at home using home test kits and don’t report it at all, or some asymptomatic patients have the virus and don’t even know they have the virus, the actual confirmed cases in the United States must be higher than the official statistics.

But Fauci insisted that instead of focusing on Omicron infected people with mild or asymptomatic symptoms, it is better to focus on severe and critically ill patients.

"The bottom line of your concern is whether we're protected from getting seriously ill or hospitalized when we get vaccinated," Fauci said.

For now, people who have been vaccinated and a third booster dose appear to be getting that protection, but people who haven't been vaccinated are still at risk.

"I'm still very concerned about the tens of millions of people who are completely unvaccinated because while many of them may be asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, a significant number of them will be severely ill," Fauci said.

Although Omicron is still conquering cities around the world, the number of confirmed cases in South Africa, where it was first discovered, is declining.

When South African scientists initially released Omicron in November last year, the seven-day average of confirmed cases in South Africa jumped from 327 to 233,437, forcing the South African government to impose curfews and restrictions on public gatherings in order to control the outbreak. impose strict restrictions. But after several weeks of strict control, the outbreak eased, with daily confirmed cases falling back to 10,324.

The South African government lifted curfews and eased controls on New Year's Eve, claiming the peak of the outbreak may have passed. What is happening in South Africa offers new hope for the world in 2022.