The now-dominant Omicron variant boosts the rise of COVID cases in Reuters in the US

By Maria Caspani and Gabriella Borter

NEW YORK (Reuters) – COVID-19 cases rose in New York City and the United States over the weekend, losing hope of a more normal holiday season, reviving restrictions and extending the country’s test infrastructure ahead of holiday travel and reunions.

The rapidly spreading Omicron variant of the rapidly spreading coronavirus in the United States has become a lightning-fast device in the United States on Monday, claiming the life of an uninsulated man in Texas, officials said.

The rise in COVID-19 cases worries public health officials as they fear an outbreak of infections after the Christmas and New Year holidays.

The Omicron variant currently accounts for 73% of U.S. coronavirus infections based on sequencing data for the week ending Saturday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.

With the new variant in circulation, COVID-19 cases are doubling in 1-1 / 2 or three days in areas with community transmission, the World Health Organization said on Saturday.

The COVID-19 test lines met in New York, Washington and other U.S. cities over the weekend as people called to find out if they were infected before the family holiday.

“Before I see my wife’s 70-year-old mother, I want to make sure I’m negative,” David Jochnowitz said as he waited for an examination in Washington.

With the rapid rise in infections, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser on Monday reinstated the order for the inner mask until the end of January and asked government officials to get vaccinated, including a booster shot.

“I think we’re all tired,” Bowser told reporters. “I’m tired too, but we have to respond to what’s going on in our city and what’s going on in our town.”

In New York, COVID-19 cases rose 60 percent in the week ending Sunday, when the Omicron variant spread rapidly in the northeastern United States. New York has set a record for most new cases reported in a single day since the pandemic began three days in a row.

“It’s a predictor of what the rest of the country will soon see, and the minimum – as NYC is highly vaccinated – is the minimum that other parts of the country will experience in unvaccinated cities and states,” said Executive Director Georges Benjamin. Of the American Public Health Association.

Many Broadway productions canceled performances due to the contamination of actors and crews. The popular production of “Hamilton” was suspended on Monday until after Christmas due to advanced COVID-19 infections.

Among the 61% of the fully vaccinated population, infections are on the rise, including 30% who have received boosters.

Omicron appears to be causing milder symptoms in vaccinated populations, and health experts remain optimistic that this surge may not have caused the same rise in previous rises in hospitalizations and deaths.

However, a 50-year-old man from eastern Harris County, Texas, who had not been vaccinated, died of an infection caused by the Omicron variant on Monday, Lina Hidalgo County Judge posted on Twitter (NYSE :). Houston County was also the first to register the U.S. Omicron case on Dec. 6.

The man was the first local dead of the variant, Hidalgo said.

‘STAY AT HOME’

New York Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi said Monday that although the new COVID-19 cases have “increased a lot,” hospitalizations have not been done at the same rate. He appreciated the vaccines and boosters that help prevent serious illness, and called for more to be done to build a “seafront” against the variant.

Omicron’s expansion prompted Duke University of Durham, North Carolina, to ask all students, faculty and staff to receive a COVID-19 booster shot on Monday the following semester.

Nationwide, cases have risen 9 percent in the past week, but have risen 57 percent since the start of December, according to a Reuters count. The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients increased by 26% this month, with hospitals in some areas already squeezing Delta variants.

The Omicron variant was more than 90% prevalent, including parts of the northeast, southeast, and northwest, according to the DNA sequencing of the virus collected by the CDC for the week ending Saturday.

There has been a sharp rise since last week, with about 3% of cases being sequenced by the virus.

Hospitals in the Midwest were facing a surge in Delta Wave patients this fall. Michigan, Indiana and Ohio have hospitalized the nation’s most COVID-19 patients per 100,000 population, Reuters has found.

In New York City, the average daily test rate reached 130,000, Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters Monday, more than double the three-week mark.

With requests for tests that exceeded capacity, de Blasio and the White House confirmed that they were looking at how to increase the availability of tests and provide the city with the other resources it needs to cope with the rise of COVID-19.

President Joe Biden will give a speech on Tuesday on how to deal with the Omicron variant, the White House said. The president said no to COVID-19, a White House employee who spent about 30 minutes around Biden on Friday after testing positive on Monday morning, the White House said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday she was stepping up her state test program, with one million kits arriving this week and the same number in the next two weeks.

“More and more people will come out of this positive,” he said. To those who do, he advised, “Stay home, don’t go out. Don’t go to work. Don’t go see your family.”

The arrival of Omicron is the opposite of the wind for the recovery of New York’s economy, which is already the rest of the country, especially in terms of employment.

The pandemic hit the city harder than the rest of the country because of the major role played by tourism, leisure and hospitality, which suffered the worst in blockades and travel restrictions. The unemployment rate in New York was 20% in the spring of 2020, more than 5 percentage points of the U.S. average, and still stands at 9%, more than double the national rate.