The US on Monday reported over 1 million COVID-19 cases amid rapid spread of the Omicron variant. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom has reported 218,724 COVID-19 cases in the latest 24-hour period, exceeding 200,000 daily cases for the first time since the start of the pandemic, Xinhua News Agency reported citing official figures on Tuesday.
The US health authorities registered more than three times as many new cases as in any previous wave of the coronavirus, over 1 million reported on Monday alone, reported USA TODAY. A substantial increase in coronavirus infections was expected when this week’s numbers came out, but nothing like this. About 1 of every 100 Americans will have been reported as a positive case in just the last week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris planned to meet with the White House coronavirus response team to discuss a course of action as omicron becomes ubiquitous, reported USA TODAY.
By 7:30 pm ET Monday, Johns Hopkins University data showed about 1,042,000 more cases than the day before, and it wasn’t immediately clear that all states had reported in. That count clearly includes hefty numbers of backlogged cases.
About one-fifth of states reported infections Saturday and one-third Sunday. Still, the previous single-day record was about 591,000 cases, set Thursday, reported USA TODAY.
The preliminary total for Monday could drive the country to a weekly average of close to 450,000 cases per day. The previous highest total for a whole week, 1.76 million, figures to be not only surpassed but possibly doubled.
The US has recorded more than 55 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, or one for every six people in the country — and more than 826,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration on Monday expanded the emergency use authorization of a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to include youths 12 to 15.
On Tuesday, British Health Secretary told Sky News that there’s nothing in data at this point that suggests that Britain needs to move away from Plan B, which includes guidance to work from home and mandatory face masks in most public indoor venues.
The British government is not planning to cut the isolation period from seven days to five days, as the United States has done, he said.
More than 90 per cent of people aged 12 and over in Britain have had their first dose of vaccine and around 82 per cent have received both doses, according to the latest figures cited by Xinhua News Agency.
(With ANI Inputs)